The Lightening Strike
by Flash McGowen
Summary: "What if this storm ends and I don't see you, as you are now, ever again?" When Tony is shot at a crime scene, a series of complications ensue, opening up old wounds and creating new ones.
1. Red, White, So Blue

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership. I sure would love to use the ad revenue for tuition though.

**[Epic Length] Author's Note:** I'm back and I come with a new story. Yes, I know, I should be updating the sixty billion (err...two?) stories I've already posted. I was inspired after helping a friend edit her neurology paper and I couldn't let the plot bunny go. So, here I am.

And yes, I've been working on "Rhapsody In You" and should be updating that soon. Thanks to all of you who have been supporting that story.

**Explanation About Lightening vs. Lightning in the Title: **Someone was kind enough to point out a potential title fail. Normally I'd rush to rectify such an egregious orthographical error however, for once, there was a method to my madness—I promise!

Years ago, the phrase "it is lightening" (as in 'thundering and lightening') was contracted to it is light'ning, which eventually became further shortened to "it is lightning." In contemporary English, the word lightning stands on its own as a noun (did you see that lightning?) and a verb (it looks as if it's going to start lightning). In the context of electrical storms, lightening would be considered a misspelling of lightning. However, I was using the archaic spelling (lightening) as a play on words, the 'ha-ha' lying in notion of illuminating (lightening: to brighten) an aspect of one of the character's past. A 'what's done in the dark soon comes to light' sort of deal.

Last, but certainly not least: the title comes from Snow Patrol's "The Lightning Strike".

And I'm out...

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter One: Red, White, So Blue

* * *

If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?

-Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol, Eyes Open

* * *

Ziva slipped into her dark apartment carrying take out from Tony's favorite French brasserie.

The fearless leader sent his team in search of rest and provisions, making it perfectly clear he expected them back bright and early, ready to continue the search for the wife of an aviator that had gone missing.

It had been nearly twenty-four hours and the case was already frosting over due to few leads, fewer hits on the missing person's report and even less forensic evidence.

Ziva shook her head. They were going to find the woman.

It was not as though they were incapable of doing so.

They had found her, after all.

The memories of her unpleasant summer billowed toward her and she flipped on the lamp beside the door, hoping the light would wash them away.

"Why do you always have to spring for those super bright light bulbs?" her partner asked from the sofa.

Ziva gasped, more out of agitation than fright. "Luckily for you I did not drop the food. Otherwise you would owe me a couple hundred dollars."

"Wow, you went all out," he bristled, pushing his arms above his head and stretching his muscular body to its full length. At the same time, he brought his feet up to the coffee table in front of him. "Oh and by the way, when one gets oneself captured in the desert by Somali extremists in order to save the life of another, heroic acts such as those tend to square ones debts."

She rolled her eyes. "I said thank you."

He smirked. "I haven't washed my cheek since." Stretching a bit more, he gave the air a melodramatic sniff. "Is that food I smell? Really, really good food?"

She held up the brown paper bag and gave it a little jiggle, her eyes dancing with mischief.

"Yay!" he clapped his hands and placed his feet on the floor, much to Ziva's relief. "And what took you so long?"

She crossed the room and stepped into the tiny crevice she called a kitchen. "I am not Waiters on Wheels, Tony. Besides, it is Friday evening, there was a—wait a minute, why am I explaining myself?—get off my couch, shut up and pretend to be grateful."

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Simmer down now. Oh, by the way, you were out of beer so I took the liberty of alleviating that problem."

She shook her head as she went off in search of silverware. "I do not believe you."

"I've got the receipt."

"I was not referring to the beer, you idiot."

"Hey! No need for the attitude."

She emerged from the kitchen and performed a cursory search of her living room. Everything seemed to be as she left it. The mail on her desk was still a jumbled mess, as were the magazines on the coffee table. Anthony DiNozzo may have been a male version of a yenta, but he was a skilled one. He wouldn't leave symptoms of his investigation.

She folded her arms and leaned against a nearby wall, watching him suspiciously. "How did you get in here, anyway?"

"With my key."

She slit her eyes. "I never gave you a key."

"Oh, sure you did," he nonchalantly insisted.

"Please do not make me—coerce—you into telling me the truth."

"Okay, so maybe I removed the spare you keep in your desk for emergencies," at her death glare, he added: "For safe keeping of course."

She flung herself in his direction, growling all the way. "You son of a…I thought I lost it."

He grinned. "I could've found it for you. Seeing as I had it and all."

"You are enjoying this?"

"Oh, yeah," he nodded with a fulfilled smirk. He tilted his head. "Anybody ever tell you you're beautiful when you're angry. Kinda like Salma Hayek in From Dusk till Dawn sans the monstrous snake…"

Ziva fought the urge to stab him with the fork she'd been carrying. "You will return that key at once."

" 'You will return that key at once' " he mocked. "Come on, Zee, it's a sign of trust."

"I do not recall you giving me a key to your place."

"You also don't recall giving me this one."

"That is because I did not—"

"Did my Spidey Senses just detect the use of a contraction?" he clapped his hands, interrupting her. "Elisions are the cornerstone of American English, Zee-Vah."

"What is so special about the omission of a sound or syllable when speaking?"

"You can't argue with the wheels of Americanization. Let it bathe you in its glory."

Sometimes, she didn't know why she bothered.

After another round of bantering, they settled down to eat.

"Is that duck confit roulade?"

"Over apple purée."

Tony's eyes lit up. "Brasserie Beck?"

Ziva chuckled. "Is there anything else?"

He took several bites and released a satisfied sigh. "Sometimes, Ziva, I really do love you."

She smiled.

It had started after their trip to Paris. She'd been careful not to give whatever had blossomed between them a name, for defining "it" would create consequences and constraints she was unable to deal with.

They alternated between her apartment and his. He warmed the left side of her bed at her place. Her snoring forced to him take refuge on his couch when she visited his. She put up with his movie nights. She'd even come to admire Quentin Tarantino, now citing Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill series as some her favorite flicks. On the rare occurrence that they had a morning off, they jogged together.

She didn't know where "this" was going and for once in her life, she didn't mind.

Dinner progressed. The current case came up. Ziva also suggested returning her key was in his best interest. After all, she really knew her way around a knife so removing a certain organ would be a fairly easy task.

The look on his face resided on the boarder of disgusted and afraid as he retrieved the key from his pocket. He wordlessly set it on the table.

They ate in silence after that. After stuffing the dishes in the dishwasher, they relaxed on the couch, each nursing a beer. Much to Tony's dismay, Ziva found herself enjoying Matt Damon and _The Bourne Identity. _

"I wonder what it would be like..."

He not so subtly stifled a yawn. He yelped when her fist collided with his arm. Rolling his eyes, he waved and fanned out his hand. "By all means, do continue."

"Thank you," she smirked. "I wonder what it would be like to be a blank canvas—no memory. No context for emotion, nothing. Sure, you still have your executive functions, but what would it be like to close yourself off instead of opening yourself up, letting people in with their declarations of faith and duty only to make you vulnerable," she paused and after a long pull of beer, she looked over and held his eyes. "Do you ever wonder what it would be like to forget everything?"

He didn't want to insult her with platitudes and clichés. Instead, he sat his beer on the table and pulled her to him, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She slid down and eased her head into his lap, her hair blanketing his legs. They remained in silence as the soft nimbus of the streetlights trickled through the living room window and licked their faces.

* * *

The morning Tony was shot had been rather uneventful, all things considered.

Gibbs had called, gruffly ordering them to a crime scene.

Ziva and Tony arrived in separate cars, with Tony stopping to grab Gibbs' coffee along the way.

As usual, when he arrived, Tony roasted McGee, grinning as he egged Sir Probe-A-Lot for details about his recent date.

Palmer had gotten Ducky lost. The medical examiner complained as his blissfully naïve assistant fended him off with his standard "wrong turn" excuse.

Gibbs and Ducky hovered over the lance corporal who had been stabbed to death in the front seat his car. The Ford's smashed window had allowed the previous night's snowstorm in, which in turn, had littered the young man's dark hair with tear shaped icicles. Ducky smiled, the scene igniting a memory of a time when he was the Dr. Jekyll to Gibbs' hide. Naturally Gibbs severed the trip down memory lane with a stare.

The persistent, wonted routine lingered over the snow-blanketed interstate a few miles from NCIS' headquarters.

No one predicted it, not even Gibbs' perpetually perceptive gut.

The shot was loud and seemed to echo through the thick group and thicker stew of voices. The sound bounced off the cars and into the ears of Anthony DiNozzo's most dear. It silenced the voices and drew out guns and later, shouts.

Ziva David was sprawled by the side of the road, the gravel now covered in icicles and blood—Tony's blood. Her partner's head was in her lap and she slowly brought her head up, her mouth open and her eyes haunted. "He's bleeding!"

* * *

Crouched on a rooftop, the young man remained hidden beside a brick barrier.

The hate barreled up his veins and oozed from his trigger finger.

When it was over, he hugged his rifle close, like a security blanket.

The snow started up again. Everything was meshed together in a gray mosaic: the snow and his target and the extraordinary hate.

The young man dissembled his rifle and gently tucked it into its case. With a whimsical smile, he slowly stood and backed away, grateful that Anthony DiNozzo had finally gotten what he deserved.


	2. Time

**Flash Says:** Thanks for the supportive feedback, folks. Glad you're enjoying it.

One more chapter before I head off to class...

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Two: Time

* * *

There was a time when we were cradled one on one and now I find that all creation is undone.

I'm throwing out all of these thoughts that are not mine.

I'm building up. You're coming down.

I'm losing time.

-Bliss, Syntax, Meccano Mind

* * *

According to a study McGee brought up during one of his McGeek diatribes, nothing in the most fundamental laws of physics suggests time should only move in one direction. Sure, there were a ton of events that were irreversible. A broken vase doesn't impulsively reassemble itself, after all. If the study were true, that arrow of time is the result of quantum mechanical amnesia that erases any trace of such an event.

The second law of thermodynamics, which says that any closed system - from particles in an isolated box to the entire universe - can only become more disordered, captures the human sense of time. The measure of this disorder, known as entropy, can only increase. Ziva learned these things in school.

When she was a little girl, Ziva David had trouble understanding the concept of time.

She knew how to read the hands on her watch and the green letters on the alarm clock by her bed. She wondered what happened between nine o'clock at night and seven am. Between bedtime and the shrieking sound of the alarm her mother got her for her birthday. Her mind embarked on breathtaking and horrifying adventures when her eyes closed. She knew enough about time to know it was a never-ending abyss of uncertainty. She knew anything and everything could happen in time's ambiguous cocoon.

Adult Ziva, tough as nails, still sleeps with one eye open.

As Special Agent David watched as the EMTs try to stabilize her partner, she wondered where time took Tony.

She imagined him nestled in between Thomas Magnum and Sean Connery's James Bond, all three leaning on Tony's long deceased 90 ZR1 Corvette. She saw him sipping a brandy at a table in the Cotton Club, right next to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, listening as Thelonious Monk performed _Straight, No Chaser_ to an audience he wasn't allowed to sit in.

She saw a little boy, sprawled out on a king size bed in a luxurious hotel suite, ordering room service to keep the fear away.

She could accept Tony twirling around in his own little Rat Pack picture, nodding his head to the flick's jazzy soundtrack. She could even deal with him watching reruns of his childhood.

She could not, _would not_ believe that a single bullet could reduce such a vibrant, insufferable man to a shell.

* * *

Gibbs decided to ride with Tony as he was his next of kin.

Ziva and McGee stayed behind, obeying their boss's [bark] request.

She felt the doe eyed agent's hand on her shoulder before he touched her.

"It'll be okay," he said, smiling a smile he thought was reassuring. "He'll be okay."

"It was a headshot, McGee."

He frowned and bit his bottom lip. He nodded and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Gibbs is with him."

"Gibbs was with Kate too."

His blue eyes widened and he watched her a moment. He swallowed, nodded again, and excused himself.

"McGee," she called out to him. "I am..."

He turned around, his expression and posture tentative. He smiled again. "I know."

She returned his smile, though her's was a hollow rendition. The conversation was case related after that. They pretended the blood on the ground wasn't their friend's. McGee was already determining the shooter's location, spouting equations and tech-speak.

Ducky calmly approached her with a napkin to wipe Tony's blood off her cheek.

"You ought to change clothes, dear. Jethro will understand."

She frowned at the stains on her pants and coat. "I do not want to leave McGee alone."

He nodded and without so much as a word, he waited until the replacement agents came to relieve them.

Ziva wished she could see beyond the quantum mechanical amnesia as time removed the bullet embedded in Tony's skull.

Instead, she stepped further into the disorder, clutching Tony's NCIS cap to her chest.

* * *

Thankfully, Tony was breathing on his own when he arrived at Bethesda. The triage team managed to get him stabilized and after some time, Gibbs was able to see him while he was prepped for surgery.

He looked so small in the bed, with its starched linens and thick dull colored blankets. So atypically lost and so vulnerable. Clear tubes snaked around his head and into his nose, a rainbow of wires stuck out like tendrils from under his over washed blankets. The blue endotracheal tube was taped to the right side of his mouth like a snorkel, his strong arms bristling with IV needles.

Gibbs stood over his second in command.

DiNozzo, his loyal Saint Bernard.

DiNozzo, who jumped into freezing water to rescue his beloved boss and a girl he barely knew even though his lungs were scared from plague.

DiNozzo, who caught the plague in the first place and managed to live to tell the tale.

DiNozzo, who Gibbs loved like a son, was allowing machines to live for him.

He scowled. Tony wasn't the type to diddle his thumbs like a passive patient. Ventilators weren't designed to be Anthony DiNozzo's lungs for the rest of his life. Monitors weren't equipped to voice his complaints or his never-ending arsenal of movie quotes.

That kind of life wasn't _good _enough for Tony and Gibbs wasn't about to allow him to be sucked into it.

Leaning over, Gibbs placed his hand on the younger man's chest and aligned his lips to his ear. "Live."

And with that, he left the room.

Abby Sciuto frantically pushed through the double doors of the ER.

The nurse at the front desk pointed her towards a tired, sweat drenched surgeon in the middle of a conversation. His eyes were propped open by obligatory alertness and his hands flew through the air, as if trying to navigate his words through the fog clouding the brain of the gray haired man in front of him.

Abby guessed the man was a father.

She was right.

When she stumbled into two familiar blue eyes, she wished she weren't.

Gibbs immediately held open his arms and the forensic scientist burrowed right in. She was sure they made quite the pair—Gibbs, ever the majestic Marine. She in her gothic glory—but all she could focus on was the surgeon's, whose black nametag screamed 'Dr. Gillian', moving lips.

"Special Agent DiNozzo is stable, but critical. The bullet shattered in the middle of his brain, leaving no exit wound. His triage CT scan showed swelling, causing an intracranial hemorrhage. We'll need your consent to perform an emergency craniotomy..."

Gibbs shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. "A what?"

"It's when the doctor pops open the dura and removes the blood clot by suction to alleviate and control the sites of bleeding," Abby answered before Gillian could. At the surgeon's widened eyes, Abby smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

The surgeon cleared his throat, waving away the need for an apology. Turning to Gibbs, he clasped his hands and placed them in front of his middle. "I'll need you to sign those consent forms as soon as possible. The faster we operate on your son..."

"He's not my son," Gibbs replied honestly, though he was surprised by how much the words hurt him.

"Since you're his next of kin, I assumed you two were family..."

"We are," Abby affirmed.

Gillian nodded. "I'll have the nurse draw up those forms."

Moments later, a brown-eyed nurse returned with a stack of papers and a plastic bag. Gibbs bit his lip when he realized they were Tony's clothes. He scrawled his signature on every dotted line while the nurse placed Tony's belongings in Abby's outstretched arms.

She cradled the bundle close. Acqua Di Parma Colonia crept from beneath the clear material and tickled her nose. Abby chuckled inwardly at Tony's cologne choice: fresh, masculine and timeless—classic DiNozzo style. The subtlety sophisticated fragrance that avoided the social hazard of trying too hard. Straightforward, lightweight and natural—much like Tony when he set aside the court jester routine.

Tony's Ferragamos pressed hard against her chin as she desperately tried to avoid the bright red blood defiling her friend's perfectly white shirt.

Gibbs didn't miss her knees buckle. Effortlessly, he caught her on the way down, joining her in the middle of the floor.

Hope's dim pulse was nestled in Abby's eyes and that offered him mercy, even if only briefly.

"He'll make it."

She didn't wait for his affirmation.

He couldn't bring himself to lie to her. So he just listened to her breathe.


	3. The Science of Waiting

**The bird bird bird, the bird is the word: **Put that funeral attire back up on the hanger ladies and gents, Tony will not step forth into the light. This has been a message from the plot department.

As always, thank you for supporting this story. I'm grateful for all the reviews and subscriptions. They make me smile. :D See.

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Three: The Science of Waiting

* * *

I must be careful now in my steps

Years of calculations and the stress

My science is waiting, nearly complete...

-Van Occupanther, Midlake, Trials of Van Occupanther

* * *

Abby and McGee used facts to take their minds off their friend.

They were only interested in verities and details: the bullet's trajectory and the exact locus of its impact, the angles of the icy wind, equations and computer simulations.

From those scientific tidbits, McBoyScout and the Mistress of the Dark stood in the dimly lit lab—her lair—creating and debunking scenarios. From the ones that made the cut, they began to contemplate several hypotheses. Ziva sipped her coffee and took in their proposed explanations, listening as they evolved from possibilities made on the basis of limited evidence to starting points used to further their investigation.

The barely noticed her.

From their hypothesis they constructed probabilities. The probabilities were then arranged in a carefully defined hierarchy, each tier waiting to be tested.

Their process was rooted in Abby's love of forensics.

Forensics left the lying up to people.

Ziva took comfort in the order and precision of the scientific method.

She watched McGee handle the matter like a mathematical equation. They had the sum, now all they had to do was find the loose strands that held the entire braid together. Once they isolated the variables, they could solve for why.

Ziva shook her head and tapped her fingers on the top of her coffee cup. It always sounded so easy.

Abby must've heard the sound of her nails drumming against the plastic. Her eyes lit up as she scampered over to Ziva's place in the corner.

"Anything new?"

Ziva silently shook her head.

The scientist was visibly disappointed. Nodding, she reached out and pulled Ziva into a hug. Over Abby's shoulder, Ziva saw McGee watching them. She could see past his stoicism. There was the expected interplay of compassion and melancholic rested within them.

What bothered her was the blackness nestled between the different hues of blue that made up the brightness of his eyes. There was a vicious, vulnerable chunk of black ice there. It was so..._un-McGee. _

It amazed her what the prospect of loss could do.

"When I left, he was still in surgery," Abby offered, her smoky voice slicing through the silence. "Gibbs's still there."

"How bad is it?" McGee asked.

Abby didn't answer him.

"It isn't fair," he said simply.

"It never is," she kept her voice even. "I'll be upstairs."

Ziva was gone before either of them could stop her.

* * *

Director Vance was waiting for Ziva at her desk when she exited the elevator. He looked her over, and then scrubbed his face with both hands to remove the sight of the bloodstains decorating her clothing.

He removed his ever-present toothpick before speaking. "I just got off the line with Gibbs. DiNozzo's still in surgery. It's touch and go. Any word on the shooter?"

"Not at this time," she replied evenly. She peeled off her jacket and draped it across her chair before sitting down and flipping on her computer. "Abby and McGee are doing all they can."

"And you?"

Part of Vance assumed she'd detached herself, isolated her emotions from the whole ordeal, that the agent's stillness was simply a thin veil designed to mask her fear. He looked for a flicker of emotion in Ziva's blank canvass of a face. Instead, he was greeted with two vacant, phlegmatic pits where her eyes should've been.

A hard silence fell over them. Vance frowned and tucked the toothpick back its place between his lips. "I've been trying to reach DiNozzo Sr. No luck. Perhaps you could start there."

"Yes, Director. "

He nodded and with a swift turn on the ball of his foot, he marched off in the direction of his office. He paused before starting up the stairs. "Take a shower, David."

She turned around and nodded, the ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.

"Keeping it inside won't help anyone, least of all you."

Inside, her heart was shattering. The cold, barbed pieces cutting and ripping until moving forward seemed completely impossible. No need to rain on everyone else's parade, not that it would take much work.

Outside, she just nodded.

"He'll live, Ziva. I know it."

Ziva surveyed Team Gibbs' section of the bullpen. Cruel emptiness and the illogical tapping of her feet against the carpet filled it. Tony's rubber band collection and the stack of files now seemed to leer like ghostly eyes from this desk. Something was hammering at her resolve and as she looked up to find the empty chair drilling into her like heated needles, she suddenly felt sick.

She slowly turned back to the director who was watching her with an investigator's eye, looking for clues.

"We do not know anything."

* * *

Dr. Gillian met Gibbs in the hallway outside Tony's new room. "It was touch and go, but we managed to remove the bullet. I'm sure your forensic department's going to want to have a look at it."

"Is there—this there brain damage?"

"We don't know how extensive it is, but we don't doubt its presence. Agent DiNozzo sustained severe damage to his hippocampus, the region of his brain closely associated with episodic and declarative memory. If he wakes up, there's huge chance he'll suffer from amnesia: retrograde or anterograde, possibility both."

Gibbs cleared his throat. "If?"

The surgeon sighed. "Maybe we should have a seat..."

Gibbs made a clucking sound deep in his throat, his mouth bending into a frown. "I'm fine," he said woodenly.

Dr. Gillian nodded. "After setting him up in ICU, we used the Glasgow Coma Scale to record his conscious state for initial as well as subsequent assessment. Patients are scored in three criteria: best eye, verbal, and motor response. Agent DiNozzo was wad admitted with a score of three—no eye, verbal and motor responses—indicating deep unconsciousness."

Gibbs took a moment to absorb what he'd been told. He balled up a fist and placed it in front of his lips. "What happens now?"

"If his score doesn't improve within the next seventy-two hours, we're going to be concerned. Right now, we have him on anticonvulsants to prevent posttraumatic seizures that can cause further damage and life support, as he's unable to sustain his vegetative functions. At the moment, all we can really do is wait."

And wait was what Gibbs did. With his hand in Tony's, Gibbs set in the plastic visitor's chair, watching as the sky announced another snow day over the rim over he building across the way.

* * *

The phone on Tony's desk rang and rang. Ziva could see herself walking over and picking it up, frowning at the fuzzy connection on the other end. Everything was so inauthentic, like a scene from those romantic chick flicks Tony despised.

Finally, an exasperated voice peeked through the static on the other end. "What's Junior done now?"

There was a pompous undercurrent in Anthony DiNozzo the father's tone of voice.

Her stomach churned when she heard the soft, arrogant chuckle.

"I just had the most amazing meal: organic lemon grazed veal with honey flavored carrots. Tell me, Ziva, have you been to Monte Carlo? The Columbus Monaco, beautiful hotel, _beautiful. _So delicately glamorous..."

She _really _wasn't in the mood.

"Tony's been shot. It does not look good."

She heard his breath catch.

After a quick: "I'm on my way." the connection ended.

* * *

Miles away, a young man placed his rifle in its hiding place before crashing onto the small couch. He pushed himself up against the armrest and threaded his hands together.

There was a new, hard emptiness in his stomach.

He'd done it. He'd actually gone through with it.

No more fantasies.

He'd kept it inside for so long, its strong tendrils wrapped around his every thought.

His hate for Anthony DiNozzo had been with him for most of his life and he felt strangely nude without it.

As the life he killed to save pushed open the front door, bubbling with stories about the fantastic day he'd had, the young man knew he'd done the right thing.


	4. Faded Pictures, Distant Clocks

**Wow: **I know I've been MIA and I'm sorry. My Lit professor thought it was attractive to slap us with two fifteen page papers—back to back. So, as you can imagine, I've had no life. Have no fear, though. I have some good news for you: my little brother damaged someone else's car yesterday—while driving mine. He's fine. My car? Not so much. Why is that good news for you? To keep from killing him I distracted myself by writing a few chapters.

Anyhow, thanks for reading/reviewing/subscribing. After my front bumper's funeral, seeing your kind words cheered me up. :)

So, here's one before I head off to class...

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Four: Faded Pictures, Distant Clocks

* * *

I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed.

Don't you breathe.

Something happened, that I never understood.

You can't leave.

Every second, dripping off my fingertips.

Wage your war.

Another soldier says he's not afraid to die.

Well I am scared.

In slow motion, the blast is beautiful.

Doors slam shut.

A clock is ticking, but it's hidden far away.

Safe and sound.

Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking, Snow Patrol, Final Straw

* * *

Benjamin Kyle was the man who couldn't remember.

On a hot August day in 2004, he was discovered badly beaten and discarded next to a Burger King. Paramedics reported that there were three depressions in his head, which could have indicated his injuries were created by a blunt object. When found, he had no memory of who he was. When he looked in the mirror, the blue eyes staring back at him belonged to a stranger.

Clive Wearing, an accomplished musicologist, contracted Herpes simplex encephalitis, a virus which normally only causes cold sores. The virus attacked Wearing's brain, destroying his ability to form lasting new memories. Still able to conduct a choir and play the piano, he can create and direct musical works. However once the music ends, the notes recede into the void of his non-existent long-term memory.

These men existed, in each moment, as if waking from a dream, with no awareness of where they were or even how they got there. No knowledge of the person they were underneath the surface, no knowledge of who was waiting for them in the next room. No childhood memories, nothing beyond snippets of the present.

Each time their eyes swept an object or a face, it had no more significance than a photograph in a stranger's album.

After hearing the doctor describe Tony's prognosis, Ziva couldn't help but wonder: is a life without memory a life without meaning?

The question lingered like a hangover as she pushed open the door and stole into Tony's room. The words throbbed against her skull and haunted her stomach, the ghosts of her earlier nausea still taunting her with their presence.

Twelve hours had passed since Tony made it out of surgery. Sixteen point seven six percent of his seventy-two hour recovery window had evaporated and there had been no change.

It had taken Ziva more than half a day to work up the nerve to visit him.

She'd grab her coat and throw it on only to return to her desk and numb herself with the anesthesia of work.

She couldn't avoid it forever. She couldn't avoid _him_ forever. Eluding the cruelly capricious climate of Tony's new reality wasn't doing either of them any favors.

Even in the face of the uncertainty hovering over their relationship, he came through for her. She wasn't about to desert him now.

Gibbs wasn't in the room when she arrived, though the plastic seat at Tony's bedside was still warm. She pulled over another chair, feeling uncomfortable taking Gibbs' place, but having no qualms about creating her own.

Every sound seemed like an outbreak of pandemonium in Tony's room. The smallest of her movements caused her chair to whimper. She forced the saliva curdling in her mouth down. The sound of it slopping against the walls of her throat seemed to echo against the room's white walls. The ineluctable, ambient sounds of the hospital on the other side of the door—intercom announcements, the sound of rubber soles brushing against shiny tiled floors, the hushed conversations between doctors and families looking for answers—were just too loud.

Yet nothing Ziva could say, no uproar she could create would be loud enough to wake him.

She gritted her teeth and slammed her hand against the faux wood of Tony's nightstand.

She _loathed _helplessness.

She tightened her grip on Tony's hand, her eyes blinking to the rhythmic background music of the ventilator and machines. The green light of the monitors glowed, flashing the artificial life the machines supplied.

She suddenly decided to talk to him.

"Remember when we were watching the Bourne Identity? You see, I think Bourne's amnesia is a metaphor for relationships, showing us that despite efforts to forget or disconnect from certain transgressions in the past, certain things, people, relationships—whatever—may come back to bite us on the ass."

The machines beeped; the lights flashed. She sat there, watching him a moment.

Sighing, she ran her fingers through her hair. "Or it is just like Memento and that damn photograph. We see it finished, undeveloping, entering the camera, being taken—I wonder if we have the same luxury with that bullet. And it does not help that you are infamous for going beyond the bounds of the moral principles of others to get what you want. I wish we could see everything in black-and-white, like Memento, so we can figure out which of the sixty billion dirtbags you have slighted over the years it was that decided to put a bullet in your brain."

The monitors drummed forward, the hissing ventilator pumped air into his lungs.

"I have been hanging around you too long," she scoffed. "I am starting to use movies to analyze my life."

She knew Anthony DiNozzo knew this scene like the back of his hand. He'd seen the "repentant partner, injured partner" hospital scene a million times. He could cite a script worth of dialogue. He knew how the directors maneuvered their audiences' emotions and how the cameraman caught just the right tear splash at the perfect angle.

She wished for one of his movie quotes in that moment. She wished she could sift through them and find the right line, the perfect string of words that would stir up a miracle and open his eyes.

Her grief was deafening and raging, though she didn't make a sound.

She didn't hear the door open behind her, nor did she hear the perfectly executed footsteps. It took a while before her reflexes warned her about the hand on her shoulder. When they did, she threw herself out of the chair, ready to defend herself.

She squinted through the unshed tears until Gibbs came into focus.

He pulled her forward, her face pressed to against the fabric of the shirt wrinkling over his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his eyes focused on the man in the bad.

Ziva rarely broke in front of him, in front of anybody, but his unrestrained strength was exactly what he needed.

* * *

It was no secret Timothy McGee loved all things technological.

As he sat at his desk, cross-referencing MOs and digging through various databases, he found himself comforted by the fact that technology was immune to human grief.

The enormous maze of circuitry that made up the databases and search engines never sagged under the weight of the many vices and crimes they held. The wires and CPUs treated the missing children, the murdered sailors, and the dying partners like numbers—each amounting to crumbs of data to be transported and saved and even forgotten.

Forgotten.

McGee's fingers froze on his keyboard.

He wondered if Tony would remember him.

He wondered if Tony would wake up at all.

McGee was a numbers man and the numbers were against Tony: nearly all patients with a severe head injury develop some degree of disability, while about two out of three patients with moderate brain injury suffer disability. Among patients discharged with a doctor's expectations of a "good recovery," at least ten percent to twenty percent suffer ongoing neuropsychological difficulties.

Then again, when had Tony ever done what he was supposed to do?

Besides, Gibbs hadn't even him permission to die and that counted for something.

Gibbs or science?

McGee groaned. He didn't know which hero to believe in.

"Timothy?" Ducky's voice drew the young agent from his musings.

McGee looked up and smiled into the medical examiner's kind face. With a groan, he ran his hand over the back of his head and slouched. "What can I do you for you, Ducky?"

"I was heading to the hospital to visit Anthony. I was wondering if you'd like to come along."

"I can't."

"You've been at this all day."

"And I haven't got a damn thing to show for it," he snapped. He swallowed and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Do you wanna know the last thing I said to him?" His laughter was soft and self-pitying, bitter even. "He was harassing me about my date the other night and I told him to 'stay out of my life'. Ha, sometimes people get what they wish for, huh?"

"Are you familiar with Mignon McLaughlin?"

McGee shook his head silently.

"Well, she was a brilliant American journalist and author. She was quite perceptive and she understood the pulchritude of the English language. She and my mother were contemporaries..."

"Ducky..."

"Anyway," he cleared his throat. "She wrote, 'Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.' "

With a swift nod of his head, he removed his coat from the back of his chair and followed Ducky in the direction of the elevator.

The list of crimes flashed on McGee's computer screen in his absence, pieces of the puzzle burrowed underneath countless names and dates.

* * *

"Eat."

Ziva looked up at the paper bag Gibbs shoved into her chest.

She instinctively peaked in: a turkey sandwich and an apple. She closed the bag and tossed it back to him. "I am not hungry," she replied vacantly from her chair.

He arched his brow and placed the bag back in her lap. "It won't taste a shade above crap, but you're no good half starved."

She sighed and ran her fingers up and down her arms. "He does not look good."

Gibbs remained silent.

"He does not look like somebody who is going to make it."

Gibbs shrugged. "He's got good doctors. He's young, healthy. Never take anything at face value, Ziva. You know better than that."

"Abby said you dropped the bullet off at the lab and came back here," she blocked.

"She's handling the ballistics."

She licked her lips. "I cannot help but think of all the 'what ifs'. What if the line at the café had been longer? What if there was a traffic jam? Why did I not see the infrared dot? Why did I not have the foresight to push him out of the way?"

Taking a swallow of coffee and setting the paper cup on his knee, Gibbs took in the closest thing he had to a son before grabbing a hold of Ziva's gaze. "You know, if you give him a license to die, he will."

"I was actually talking to him," she laughed humorlessly. "I do not expect him to hear me. Not that it would matter, anyway. I have not said anything of sustenance since I sat down."

"That's for him to decide."

She raked him with an incredulous stare, though it immediately dissolved into one of sadness. "He has always been intuitive, sometimes annoyingly so. I just...if I keep talking he will figured out—he will figure out I think he is dying." She said softly, but her words ricocheted off the room's walls and leaped back into her lap.

He tilted his head and studied her for a beat, then shrugged. "Then stop saying goodbye."

* * *

"Hey Dad, did you know time stands still?"

The young man watched the blue flame sputter out of his lighter as he lit his cigarette. He took a long drag, savoring the irresistible burn in his throat. Laughing, he washed down the mouthful of smoke with a swallow of beer before loosening his tie and unbuttoning the first few buttons on his collared shirt.

"Really?" he laughed again. His muscles groaned as they brought his evening cigarette to his lips and back to the ashtray his son made him in the second grade.

"Really," the boy affirmed, stuffing a chunk of burger in his mouth. Gulping down half his milk, he let out a satisfied burp before he continued. "We learned about this guy named Henry Molaison. His doctor took out chunks of his brain to help with this disorder called epilepsy. The doctor failed and because of it, Mr. Molaison couldn't make new memories. Like, this other doctor had been visiting him for more than twenty-five years and he couldn't even remember her if she left him for more than a few minutes. He remembered his childhood, even the small stuff, but he never knew where he was or the person he was currently talking to. Freaky, huh?"

The young man leaned back and allowed the cushions on the couch to swallow him.

Freaky was the least of it.

The young man couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to wake up with a clean emotional slate. To reduce his hate and pain to the past, a past that would be truly behind him. To experience terrible heartache and guilt and to just simply forget about it.

He wondered what it would be like to have no knowledge of his own mistakes.

His mind wandered to his rifle, tucked into its hiding place and he smiled.

Anthony DiNozzo had been taken care of.

He glanced at the clock on the cable box. Time was moving forward and so was he.


	5. Monkey Wrenches

**Question: **Have you guys been receiving review replies? I sent a friend a PM and she didn't receive it and since review replies are sent as PMs, I just thought I'd make sure.

As always, thanks for the feedback and subscriptions. They make this worth the effort.

Roger that?

Flash over and out!

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Five: Monkey Wrenches

* * *

Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me: a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest, the best parts of Lonely, duct-tape and soldered wires, new words for old desires, and every birthday card I threw away.

I wait in 4/4 time.

Count yellow highway lines that you're relying on to lead you home.

-Left and Leaving, Weakerthans, Left and Leaving

* * *

Two hours later Ziva drove home on autopilot, unaware of the trip.

Gibbs had sent her home to rest. She decided not to take it for granted, knowing such offers were rarities.

She opened her door and flipped on the light, tossing her mail on the coffee table, before walking into the kitchen. Pulling open the refrigerator, she glared as the leftovers from Brasserie Beck taunted her from the top shelf.

She slammed the door and trudged back into the living room.

She wasn't hungry, anyway.

Wandering to the couch, she decided to distract herself with early morning television. After a hasty and impatient flip through various news outlets and children's shows, she opted for a shower.

In the bathroom, she ran the hot water longer than necessary. Steam billowed into the small room and Ziva found herself feeling grateful that she couldn't see her own reflection in the mirror above the sink.

She peeled off her clothes, still sodden with Tony's blood, and tossed them aside. The blood had seeped through the olive green fabric of her pants, leaving a faint whisper of crimson on her thighs.

Pushing back the curtain, she step into the water, almost oblivious to its heat and leaned her head against the moist tile. She had every intention of not thinking, but the images—the bed, the thick soupy fetor of death clinging to air, the monitors, the bullet—ricocheted from the bathroom's damp walls. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep the pictures out completely.

No such luck.

The words weren't beyond the curtain, sitting on the toilet, waiting to be flushed. They were in her mind, festering.

She lowered herself downward, until her back touched the tub, and allowed the water to rinse over her. She cried great, damp, raking sobs that nobody could hear over the building's prehistoric plumbing.

Not that it would matter.

She was alone.

* * *

"The frontal lobes are right about here," the young man explained, gently tapping the soft pads of his index and middle fingers against his son's forehead. "Do you remember what they do?"

They were standing over the small glass kitchen table, putting the final touches on the boy's science project. He'd insisted on making a model of the brain out of Papier-mâché and Styrofoam chips, much to his father's initial chagrin.

The kitchen's dishevelment stood in contrast with the rest of the apartment, which was a pristine medley of cotemporary furniture and modern art, devoid of any welcoming sort of clutter or imperfection. The only evidence of child-induced disarray was the green pile of game cases stacked relatively neatly beside the Xbox 360.

The young man had been meticulous his entire life. He cleaned with fastidious care, growing angry at the slightest hint of disorder. Disorganization and filth spread like a pathogen, infecting his thoughts until his brain morphed into a defiled lump of rancid tissue.

Yet there they stood, clothes doused in gooey clumps of old newspaper, shoes chained to the sticky floor, giggling as they hastily stuffed soggy Apple Jacks down their throats while they glued on the remaining neurological systems.

At the end of the day, his son mattered the most. He'd do anything for his son.

Anything.

"Dad?" the boy tiled his dead, studying his father. "You okay?"

"Fine," he grinned and ruffled the boy's hair, laughing as the kid frantically tried to remove the clumps of gunk before it dried. "Frontal lobes—go!"

"Challenge me, Dad. _Challenge _me," he smirked, clearing his throat. "Ahem, so the frontal lobes control our decision making. You know, our self-control and understanding of how we act and blah blah blah. Hey, wanna know something really weird?"

"Is there anything else with you?"

Rolling his eyes, he dealt his father a playful jab to the shoulder. "_Anyway_, so I read this article for my project about this dude who ended up with some called confab…confaba…"

"Confabulation?"

"That! So, yeah, it's when this blood vessel explodes and it cuts off the flow of blood mixed with oxygen to the frontal lobe. So this dude had been in the hospital for a long time, but when his doctor asked him about what he did over the weekend, he talked about all this detailed stuff, like seeing a particular movie with his girl and even what she was wearing. He did have a girlfriend and she visited him, but he'd never left the hospital. People think memory is like a hard drive that stores info, but it's like putting together a puzzle. We remember something, but we use bits and pieces of old stuff and new stuff to put it together. Because the dude had confib-whatever, he couldn't figure out what to throw away and what to keep. Weird, right?"

The young man opened his mouth, but the ringing of his cell phone silenced his response.

He flipped open the phone, listened to the words on the other end, and without hesitation, he sent his arms flying, knocking the boy's project and all his hard work to the floor.

"Dad!"

He'd lived.

The son of a bitch had actually _lived. _

With a swift kick of his shoe, the young man sent the tiny frontal lobes across the room before throwing himself out of the kitchen.

The boy remained still, his eyes brimming with unshed tears.

His father later emerged, dressed to kill.

"Clean up that mess," the young man grumbled before slamming the door.

The boy stood still, glancing at the shattered brain, staring numbly at the hole where the frontal lobes should've been.

* * *

"The earliest description of the ridge running along the floor of the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle came from the Venetian anatomist, Julius Caesar Aranzi. He initially likened it to a silkworm, and then a sea horse. The German anatomist, Duvernoy, the first to illustrate the structure, also wavered between sea horse and silkworm."

Anthony DiNozzo "Senior" arrived nearly twenty-four hours into his son's safe recovery window. After suffering through several weather delays and cancelations he'd made it to Bethesda only to find another man at his son's beside.

He recognized the man as Ducky. He remembered a conversation he and Junior had about the man in passing. Apparently, the man nicknamed after a cartoon character had extensive conversations with cadavers. Not just any sort of conversation, but real, stimulating tête-à-têtes, offering words normally fit for the living.

Senior wondered if he was listening to the voice Ducky reserved for his patients. Calming and smooth, the medical examiner's sentences sounded like a beacon desperately trying to penetrate the fog. He wondered which way his son was being guided.

"Most people thought that hippocampus was associated with olfaction. That was later proven to be false, but people continue to hold interest in the role of the hippocampus in the memory of odors. In terms of your case, there are many hypotheses that suggest a correlation between hippocampal damage and amnesia and while most are in agreement that our hippocampus plays a role of some form in memory, the precise details are still up for debate. So you see, my dear boy, although you've sustained some hippocampal damage, there is no definitive guarantee that you'll come back to us an amnesiac."

Amnesiac?

Senior tasted the word, sampled its meaning on his tongue. Its syllables and definitions lingered there, sour and disgusting.

He couldn't listen to it anymore.

When he stepped into the room Ducky greeted him politely. Senior cringed at the other man's ability to make even small talk intellectually impressive. After some time, the medical examiner excused himself and left Senior alone with his boy.

It took him a moment to be able to sit down, though the ache in his back had nothing to with it. Junior looked so...

He didn't have the words and he _always_ had words for this Peter Pan of a man. They weren't always pretty or worthy of a greeting card, but they were there.

_He_ was there and his own way, Senior always had been. Though in that room, with the machines and the prognosis that came with them, blinking in the shadows, being there suddenly didn't feel like enough.

He started at his son, suddenly feeling nervous and dry-mouthed, as if they were strangers.

In some ways, they were.

Junior remained guarded around him, formal even. They always shied away from below the surface conversation. Their words were cordial, but detached.

He reached out to touch Junior's arm, but thought against it midway. As he returned his hand to his lap, he wondered what Junior would remember most about him.

Memory was like a photograph with layers of exposures, littered with piles of blurry details and shapes. Senior knew that the exposures multiplied with age, that the relationship between old and new stretched over time. Gripping the edge of his son's bed, Senior wondered if Tony would be able to weed through the stack of photographs, the little film reels of his life, to see beyond the self-created plot points and scenes, and remember a time when he was truly loved.

It sickened Senior to know his face would not be the first to shimmer into view.

He shook his head and sighed. "You know, Junior. You could teach a graduate course on screwing up, but you've somehow managed to keep your head above water all these years. You know, I didn't always like you, but I loved you. Maybe not the way you needed me to. Even when we didn't agree, I loved you for your courage and your confidence. We've burned a lot of bridges, Boy. But now—what now? What am I supposed to do for you now?"

As Tony's monitors began to howl and as he begun to convulse, Senior did the most he could: shout for a doctor.

* * *

Senior was surprised how little time it took Gibbs and Co. to arrive at Bethesda.

They arrived as a family.

Abby clutched Ziva's hand with her left and McGee's with her right, her black pigtails spilling down Ziva's shoulder like wet tar as she leaned on the agent for comfort. Gibbs and Ducky listened intently as a pack of neurosurgeons and nurses hastily apprised them of the situation.

Senior came to the realization that they—Gibbs and his pack of Giblets and their little medical examiner too—were Tony's family. With his back against the hallway's cold wall and his arms folded, Anthony DiNozzo Sr. felt like an intrusion during his own son's darkest hour.

"We have reason to believe Tony suffered a post traumatic seizure, but we won't know until we can perform an MRI. However, that's the least of our worries," Dr. Gillian explained. "As a result, Tony's intracranial pressure has risen. Because of his risk for intracranial hematomas we're going to have to perform a decompressive craniectomy. We'll be removing a part of his skull and the dura mater, allowing the brain to swell without crushing it."

"So he'll have a hole in his head…" Senior asked as Abby gasped and wrenched her hands free, throwing them up to her lips.

Gillian arched his brow at Senior. "Temporarily, Mr…"

"DiNozzo," he replied tersely. "I'm his father."

Gillian simply nodded. "We'll store the removed bone flap in his abdomen until the cause of the raised pressure has been evacuated. Afterward, it'll be returned..."

"Absolutely not! Who knows what type of complications…"

"I am sure they are a lot better than him dying," came Ziva's brusque retort.

Senior narrowed his eyes at Ziva. "Thankfully it isn't your call to make."

"With all due respect Mr. DiNozzo, Agent Gibbs is his next of kin," Gillian gently stepped in. "Legally, it's his decision."

Gibbs silently nodded his consent and without a parting word, Gillian and his sea of white coats and green scrubs receded in the direction of the OR.

Senior exploded. "If anything happens to _my s_on…"

One doctor lingered behind, stepping into the conversation and effectively cutting off Senior's tirade "A word Agent Gibbs." He asked, his brows hovering over his wire rimmed glasses as he shrugged his shoulders in the direction of Tony's now empty room.

Gibbs nodded at the doctor he recognized to be Todd Gelfand, the neurosurgeon responsible for his care during his own time in Bethesda's ICU. Without so much as a nod to Senior, he stepped into the door the doctor held open.

"You're on DiNozzo's case?"

Gelfand nodded. "I figured you and your team would appreciate a familiar face. I hate to burden you with this, but I ran across a major discrepancy in Agent DiNozzo's chart. We've had him on an intravenous drip of Depakene, an antiepileptic to reduce posttraumatic seizures since he arrived. He's been given the same amount, no changes what so ever—until recently."

Gibbs' eyes hardened. "Someone tampered with Tony's meds?"

"It appears that way and unfortunately, it may cost him his life."


	6. The Bigness of Small Things

**Author's Monologue**: Here's a little something before I go on vacation. This chapter ended up being longer than I wanted, but the plot bunny decided to hop in its own direction.

I hope you guys got review replies this time around. If not, let me know.

Hope you guys enjoyed your holiday! Loving the feedback and the subscriptions, keep it coming folks!

Oh! This chapter's title is borrowed from Gus Franklin from Architecture in Helsinki & The Universe. The song of the same name can be found on the album "The Outer Void Intrepid Sailor".

-Flash out!

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Six: The Bigness of Small Things

* * *

I was dressed embarrassment.

I was dressed in wine.

If you had a part of me, will you take you're time?

Even if I come back, even if I die is there some idea to replace my life?

Like a father to impress;

Like a mother's mourning dress, if you ever make a mess.

I'll do anything for you.

- For the Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless in Ypsilanti, Sufjan Stevens, Greetings From Michigan—The Great Lake State

* * *

Gibbs' eyes hardened. "Someone tampered with Tony's meds?"

"It appears that way and unfortunately, it may cost him his life." Gelfand cleared his throat and pushed his glasses back up on his nose before continuing. "As you know, Agent DiNozzo was admitted with a penetrating head injury. The bullet breeched the dura mater and due to swelling and bleeding, his intracranial pressure increased. The emergency craniotomy performed a few days ago managed to mitigate and suppress the initial bleeding, but the seizure induced swelling and the subsequent craniectomy have put Tony had risk for brain abscess."

Gibbs remained silent, his blue stare jagged as a steak knife. The stenographer imbedded in his mind reread the doctor's revelation and he furrowed his naturally arched brows.

"What happens now?" he asked hollowly.

"Because brain abscess is bacterial, he'll be placed in the isolation ward post op."

"Like when he had the plague?"

"Exactly. We'll have him on an intravenous drip of antibiotics and he'll be monitored by a select group of staff until we can weed out our saboteur."

"Yeah? And how do we know the dirt bag won't be among them?"

Gelfand smiled. "I trust them with my life—and I trusted them with yours."

That was all Gibbs needed. "I'll need a list of staff members who had…"

"…access to Agent DiNozzo," the surgeon finished for him. "Already taken care of. One of the residents is drawing it up."

Gibbs nodded and pulled open the door. The doctor's voice stopped him before he could step through it.

"I never got to offer my condolences about Jenny…err Director Shepard," Gelfand amended at Gibbs' curious look. "I would've come to the funeral, but I was scheduled for surgery—ahem—anyway, she was an amazing woman and I'm happy to have known her—"

As Gelfand spoke, another doctor rushed into the room, panting and holding a piece of paper.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," the young man said, extending both men a contrite smile between breaths. "You requested a list of personnel who had access to Agent DiNozzo…"

Without a word, Gibbs took the document and headed off in the direction of the elevator.

McGee slipped in just as the doors were closing.

They rode silence. McGee studied his superior with brooding and pensive eyes as the lift moved effortlessly down the shaft. Gibbs just stared at the list, blending the names into a purée of possibilities.

McGee didn't break the silence until they were speeding down the highway, half way back to NCIS. "I think he'll pull through. He hasn't been out that long. There's still hope," sighing suddenly, he turned toward the frosted window, and in an almost silent voice, added, "Do you think I'm grasping at straws?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Maybe, but that doesn't mean you need to scrap it."

They stopped at a red light. A man crossed the street and smiled at them. For a moment his dark hair lightened, his face morphed into a familiar one, and they found themselves smiling at Tony. The light changed and the illusion shattered.

"Do you think he'll pull through?" McGee asked, the hope lifting his voice an octave.

Gibbs didn't answer. McGee nodded. He opened the glove compartment and closed it, just to feel useful.

Pulling into the Navy yard, Gibbs' chest contorted as he realized he would have to make a decision soon.

Trouble was, he didn't think he could.

* * *

Later that evening, the young man returned home to find his son crouched in the armchair next to the couch, folding laundry and watching cartoons.

"Hey," he smiled at the boy as he draped his coat over the back of the couch.

Silence.

"You deaf all of a sudden?"

By the time he heard the boy grunt something he assumed to mean "hello" the young was already in the kitchen, rattling around in the refrigerator in search of a beer. Returning to the living room, he sat the green bottle on the coffee table before easing onto the couch and picking up the remote.

"I'm sorry about your project," he said after settling on ESPEN. "I shouldn't have lost it like that."

"Whatever," the boy shrugged before pulling a pair of jeans from the plastic basket at his feet. He folded them with swift, expert movements. "Now I have to get an 'A' on every test from here on out or Mr. Randall says I'll have to go to summer school."

"I'll go down to the school and straighten it out."

"Thanks," he relaxed a bit as he reached into the basket again, wrestling a shirt from beneath the mound of clothes. Frowning, he fingered the faded fabric. "Whose is this?"

The young man was across the room in an instant, his left hand suddenly like a vise around the boy's throat. He pinned him to the back of the chair, restraining the boy's small body with his own arms.

As the boy's eyes widened, no doubt from lack of air, the young man realized how light his son was and in that realization, the father remembered who he was holding. He remembered right from wrong. He remembered to let them both breathe.

"I'm sorry."

Silence. Vicious silence.

"Where'd you find it?"

"Your…your closet. I thought you'd forgotten it," his reply was slow and deliberate. "Sorry…"

"It's okay," the young man reached to ruffle the boy's hair, but froze when he flinched. Nodding, the young man removed the shirt from the pile before trudging off toward his bedroom.

Once the door closed, he crashed onto his bed and pressed the shirt against his nose.

A faint hint of her perfume still lingered.

As did a murmur of _his_ cologne.

Thoroughly disgusted, he balled up the shirt and threw it against the wall. He panted, his chest rising and falling as the hate gurgled in his lungs. He rolled out of bed and fell to his knees, reaching under his mattress to retrieve the only picture he had of her.

Her dark curls were an untamed nimbus around the oval shape of her pale face. She was smiling, though he was always sure it was rehearsed. There were dark circles under her eyes, circular blotches of moisture where her full breast pressed against her floral blouse. The baby slept next to her, blissfully unaware and uninformed.

She was so beautiful.

The young man stared the photographer's shadow that had crept into the picture. He remained focused on the grey silhouette until his eyes became hooded with sleepiness.

Tucking the photo back in its resting place, he returned to his bed and allowed his mind to wander to the Depakene in his bag.

Smiling, he fell asleep, confidant that Anthony DiNozzo had gotten exactly what he deserved.

* * *

It had taken hours between the bucket load of other cases, but McGee managed to come up with something useful.

"Of the ten staff members listed, only she stood out. Meet Lieutenant Hailey Holloway, a neurology nurse in the med corps. Forty-one, married with a daughter. Lives in Fredrick, a little over an hour away from Bethesda."

He flicked on the plasma in the bullpen and Lieutenant Holloway's service record shimmered into view. She didn't look ruthless. She didn't even look suspicious, though her eyes had a timid tinge to them, which seemed odd to Gibbs, seeing as she'd served during Desert Storm before being assigned to Bethesda.

"She received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and her commission as an Ensign on 1991 two years before Tony graduated—from Ohio State University..."

"...Tony's alma mater," Gibbs said before McGee could. "OSU 's a big campus, McGee."

"So was Tony's little black book," Ziva quipped from her desk.

"I need something more than the clichéd jilted lover MO," Gibbs said tersely.

McGee cleared his throat. "I pulled her financials. Her credit report's shot. She recently took out a second mortgage, which she's currently behind on. Her daughter's private school fees are late as of the current semester. Antiepileptics have a high street value and in her current situation…"

Gibbs was half way to the elevator by the time McGee and Ziva realized what was going on. "McGee, with me. Ziva, you should head home."

Her eyes flared. "The kid mitts are unnecessary..."

"We'll have a hard time getting anything out of her around a broken trachea, Ziva."

Hours later, Ziva woke in her apartment with another pounding headache. She reached under her pillow and pulled out her Glock, brushing the pads of her fingers against its cool body.

She'd gone home to grab a change of clothes and ended up falling asleep. Glancing at the clock on her nightstand, she hurried into the bathroom and managed to do something with her hair, trying her best to style away the vulnerability that recently seized every part of her body. It had taken great skill, but she'd managed to avoid the vacant eyed woman in the mirror above the sink.

She rarely paid attention to her looks. One rarely had time for vanity between assassinations and undercover recon ops, after all. Tony thought she was beautiful. He'd told her so, in Paris while they were standing on the Pont des Arts, a bridge over looking the River Seine.

Beautiful.

Not hot or sexy or even attractive.

Beautiful.

Quiet as it was kept, Tony wasn't attracted to any woman under forty with a belly button—though he played the part quite well. Standing on that bridge, with Norte Dame lit up behind the fiery fresco of the Parisian sunset, he actually made her feel special.

Ziva rolled her eyes. She _really_ needed to cancel that stupid romance novel subscription.

Picking up her car keys and flinging on her coat, she smirked as she tried to imagine Tony as Fabio.

She managed to make it halfway to NCIS before she felt the sudden urge to take a detour.

She jerked into parking space next to Tony's car. After the shooting, she'd been tasked with driving it back to his building. She couldn't remember doing it.

She couldn't remember much about that day.

Except the blood.

She pushed open the door and breathed in. It was as if he never left. The apartment's quiet seeped into her bones, causing her to shiver.

Stealing further inside, she closed the door when she heard a faint whistle coming from the kitchen. A teakettle sat on a burner, a ring of blue quaking beneath it. A half empty bottle of Tony's good scotch sat on the counter.

With her hand on her gun, she started up the stairs.

The voice came in the form of a muffled, uninflected chant. She looked through the door of Tony's bedroom. Senior was kneeling in front of the bed, his back to her, his body quivering slightly. The floor cried under the weight of her feet. He whipped around, startled and embarrassed. His face was wet, his hands steepled.

She excused herself before closing the door, startled by the intimacy of the moment.

Sitting on Tony's couch, listening to his father pray and cry in front of the bed where they'd made love on numerous occasions, she felt the distinct desire to be touched by the inscrutable hand of a higher power. She hook her head when she realized it was Tony, not faith, she craved.

A moment later, Senior came downstairs with dry eyes. He sat in the recliner angled away from the couch and sized her up. "You have a key?"

"For emergencies." She wanted to ask him how he could have the nerve to sit on Tony's couch, as if he belonged, as if the decades of silence and obliviousness never existed. "How long were you at the hospital?" she asked instead.

"Not long. I can't stand hospitals," he tugged at his tie and chuckled. " Something I picked up for my father, I suppose. He was convinced if he ever went into a hospital, he'd come out in a casket. As it turned out, he was right on the money. When we finally wrestled him into one, he didn't last the rest of the day. Lung cancer, they said."

"He smoked?"

"Like a chimney," he affirmed with a wistful smile. "Smelled like one too. His coffin nails of choice were Stradivarius Churchills. Boy, he loved cigars, but not as much as he loved Junior." Senior shook his head and sighed. "He loved that kid a heck of a lot more than he ever loved me."

"I am glad someone did."

His smiled faded. "Me too," he said thinly.

"What are you doing here?"

He furrowed his brow. "Excuse me?"

"Why are you here?" she waved her hands about the room. "In this house? In this city?"

"I distinctively remember you calling me," he said evenly.

"What do you want from him?"

"What exactly are you implying, young lady?"

"You cut him out of your life decades ago. You would sit him out like fine china in those ridiculous sailor suits, painting the illusion of a traditional family. You manipulate and goad him, putting him down at every opportunity. Then you cozy up to his bedside and play the heartbroken father."

He narrowed his eyes. "At the end of the day, he's my son and I love him. I don't owe you an explanation beyond that."

Ziva looked into his eyes. Tony's eyes, though they lacked the beautifully childish whimsicality she'd come to love. She wanted desperately to believe him, but the impulse only lasted a moment.

She opened her mouth, but the ringing of his cell phone shifted the direction of the conversation. She watched him listen and hang up. "That was one of Junior's doctors. He wants to see me at the hospital. I figured you'd like to come along."

* * *

"Anything on the person who tampered with Tony's drops?" Ziva asked her boss when she and Senior joined Gibbs and McGee in the isolation ward's waiting room.

"Drips," McGee amended nervously. He was already taking on Tony's role. He blushed under Ziva's glare. "We just got Lieutenant Holloway into custody. Gibbs was about to start the interrogation when Gelfand called."

And as if summoned, the doctor appeared, his white coat swishing like a veil behind him. "I'll get straight to the point. Agent DiNozzo came through surgery without a hitch and he appears to be responding well to the antibiotics."

"I sense a but…"

Gelfand looked at Senior. "DiNozzo's seventy two hour window is nearly up. He continues to be unresponsive. He's likely to remain that was indefinitely."

" 'Define 'likely'. Are you telling me there's no chance of him snapping out of it?"

"There's always a possibility, Agent Gibbs."

"Skip the hospital-babble and level with me, Doctor."

"A patient with Tony's profile has a lot of hurdles in his path, Gibbs. Now he'll remain alive indefinitely on life support, but I'm sorry: in my medical opinion, Agent DiNozzo may never regain consciousness."

* * *

If I'll goes well, I'll post the next chapter tomorrow. Wouldn't want to leave you guys hanging. ;)


	7. The Forgotten Fly in the Ointment

S**o, um, yeah: **several tomorrows later I come bearing an l update. Life decided it would be très awesome to rob me of my free time. Between finals and preparing for graduation I've basically had no life, but my muse struck and so, here I am.

I'm posting this chapter before I head off to complete a litany of errands and I haven't had time to truly edit so **be warned, there may be more grammatical mistakes than usual. I apologize in advance. **I just felt bad about leaving you guys hanging for so long.

I know I asked this question a few chapters back, but I was wondering if you all have been receiving my review/message replies. I noticed I had a few messages backed up and I responded to them, but a friend let me know that she didn't get my latest PM. In case you haven't received a reply: **Thanks for all the feedback! It really keeps this story alive.**

Until next time.

-Flash

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Seven: The Forgotten Fly in the Ointment

* * *

I think I'll go home and mull this over before I cram it down my throat.  
At long last it's crashed, its colossal mass has broken up into bits in my moat.

It's a luscious mix of words and tricks that let us bet when we know we should fold.

-Caring is Creepy, The Shins, Oh, Inverted World

* * *

Senior allowed McGee to give him a ride back to Tony's apartment.

As the car meandered through the snow-mantled street, Senior stared at the leafless trees outside the window, their thin bodies blackened by the twilight. Their shadows were quilted into a dismal wall, thick mounds of filthy snow at their feet. The few people outside charged along, focused solely on escaping the bleak weather.

"Tony told me you won a Rubix's Cube championship."

McGee jumped at the sound of Senior's voice, feeling his palms grow slick against the steering wheel. The Charger's hemi hummed in time with Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" as he flashed Tony's father a wary look. "…yeah?"

"That's no small feat."

He swallowed. "Thank you?"

The old man tugged at his tie. "How many combinations are there?"

"Forty three quintillion."

"...quintillion?"

McGee nodded, flooring the gas to pass a slow mini van. "Well, about four times ten to the nineteenth power. See, the cube just requires patience and a simple system. You don't have to remember it as a whole. You can try numerical units with meaningful associations. Like, forty-three was the year my father was born or if you flip a coin ten times in a row, there are exactly two hundred and fifty two ways to get five heads and five tails—stuff like that."

"If you're so good at math," he fixed his hard eyes on McGee. "What's the probability of my son waking up? How many numerical units can I string together to create the desired outcome of my boy snapping out of it?"

They stopped at a red light. McGee eyed him sympathetically. "You shouldn't give up on him. Dr. Gelfand…"

Senior shook his head and let out a hollow chuckle. "Dr. Gelfand is very professional. He would never use words like futile or incurable, but that's what he meant and that's what we have to accept."

"Plenty of patients have woken up from comas, Mr. DiNozzo. Even in the face of a 'hopeless' prognosis."

"So he's just supposed to linger? Not dead or alive, existing?" Senior closed his eyes and when he reopened up them, they were in front of Tony's building. "Can you handle a bit of honesty, son?"

McGee flicked off the motor. His mouth opened and closed, wordlessly. The candid, timid expression dimming the older man's striking features frightened McGee. He found himself regretting having nodded.

"In quiet moments, when I'm sitting with Junior or alone in his apartment, do you know what goes through my mind? I think about all the men Tony's age I've passed on the street or in hallways and I think: 'I wish it were one of them'. When I look at Gibbs or you, even Ziva and Abby, everybody I met ambling about that stupid bullpen: I wish it were one of you strapped to that bed. It makes me sick, thinking that away, but it's true."

McGee flinched as Senior's voice rose. He felt something inside of him constrict. His eyes widened as he realized he shared the same hopes.

Anybody but Tony.

He felt nauseous.

"You look horrified," Senior said, his voice suddenly colorless. "You should. Cops, his fellow agents, his friends…even as I sit around, whining at God to wake him up, I'm still coming up with these scenarios, thinking how _good_ it would've been if it were one of you. What kind of man does that make me?"

They held each other's eyes for a beat then Senior turned and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

Gibbs hated being summoned. He especially hated being summoned by self-righteous DEA agents hell bent on preserving their investigation at Tony's expense. He watched them, the bottle blonde Agent Glover and her rigid male partner, through narrowed eyes as they practically ordered Vance to release Lieutenant Holloway without compromising their surveillance team.

"So let me get this straight, the DEA throws its weight around and we're just supposed to calmly bend over and grab our ankles?"

Vance shook his head and removed the toothpick from his lips. "Seems to be the gist of it."

Gibbs offered the pesky pair a bored tilt of his head "What exactly does the DEA want with Holloway?"

"You needn't concern yourself with that," Agent Hayes snapped, squaring his shoulders. "You are to no longer contact Lieutenant Holloway or her attorney."

"Wow," Gibbs uttered a humorless laugh and shook his head, lifting up a brow. "We don't have time for a pissing contest. One of my agents is strapped to a bed and I believe Holloway's got something to offer to our investigation. Now, is it safe to assume you think she's been stealing and distributing meds?

"The only connection between Holloway and DiNozzo is that they both attended OSU around the same time. Big whoop. That doesn't mean she put a bullet in his head."

"She may know who did."

Glover sighed and run her fingers through her hair. "Were aren't unsympathetic to your predicament Agent Gibbs, but the fact of the matter is: we can't help you."

"Damn it, lady!" Gibbs smacked his hand against Vance's desk. "A man's lying in a bed, his skull shattered. Now, imagine that man isn't my Agent, but your partner. How would you feel if we dicked you around and threw a suspect under the bus?"

Glover bit her lip. "When were his meds tampered with?"

"Yesterday evening."

"Couldn't have been her."

Gibbs frowned. "I need proof."

"Holloway wasn't at the hospital at all yesterday. My team's been tailing her all week. She spent the day meeting with various distributers across the metropolitan area. She was miles away from Bethesda."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"You're being dicked around all right, but it isn't by us," Hayes smirked. "Seems to me like you're being played."

* * *

Ziva wandered into Abby's lab only to be greeted by the sound of breaking glass.

"Abby?"

The forensic scientist was bent over the shattered remains of a graduated cylinder, her eyes red and angry. Ziva wordlessly went for the broom and dustpan in Abby's office. Emptying the dustpan, she returned it to its place before joining a now composed Abby.

"You look like crap."

The sarcastic 'thank you' dissolved on Ziva's tongue as she suddenly found herself engulfed in Abby's arms. They stayed that way for a long, quiet moment before Ziva gently and politely untangled herself.

"Any change?"

Ziva debated lying, but quickly dismissed the idea. "The doctors…"

Abby's eyes widened. "Never mind," she shook her head and flailed her hands, erasing the question. "I don't want to know. Not yet. I'm not ready."

Ziva nodded, understanding Abby's need to be anesthetized with denial. "Why were you so upset?"

"Bureaucracies and their endless jungle of red tape! Ugh, it's like a frickin' maze of pissing contests," she huffed, taking a rough sip of Caf-Pow. "That's better! See, I ran the MO through VICAP and I came up with seven matches…"

"Good?"

Abby narrowed her eyes and flicked on the plasma. Crime scene photos were displayed neatly across the screen. "No es bueno! These five are social workers, three from the DC Metropolitan area and one from New York City. It's a long shot—no pun intended—but their shootings match Tony's to a tee. All five shot in the head, the bullet damaging the hippocampic region. The hippocampic region…"

"…controls memory?" Ziva folded her arms. "What did the killer want them to forget?"

"Beats me," Abby sighed, resting her elbows beside her keyboard. "I've been playing phone-n-hold with New York's ACS and Metro Child Protective Services trying to find a common case file, but they refuse to roll over. The shooter's in that system, I just know it. It just gets blurry when I try and connect it all to Tony."

"If all else fails you and McGee can do what you do best."

Her face erupted into a smile. She launched herself at Ziva. "You're a genius."

Ziva's squeezed her shoulder. "It's late, I'll drive you home."

Abby shook her head. "No can do. Timmy and I have work to do. If you really wanna be helpful you can click those pretty boots and snag me a colossal sized Caf-Pow!"

Smiling, Ziva head off toward the elevator.

"And a pepperoni pizza…with extra sauce!" was the last thing she heard before the doors shut.

* * *

The next morning found Senior at the hospital, sitting in the Isolation Ward's waiting area, flipping peevishly through _The Wall Street Journal_.

Gibbs was already visiting with Junior and Senior begrudgingly allowed them some privacy. He remembered Gibbs, his head against the thick slab of glass, staring at Tony with an odd tint in his eye, as if Junior were new and strange and special.

Love.

Senior pulled a page apart and rested his elbow on his chair's hard armrest. He couldn't help but dislike the man he became when Gibbs was around. The simple fact of the man's presence, the definition of the agent's relationship with _his _son, sent a surge of anger and resentment through Senior's blood stream.

He was jealous.

He took a sip of vending machine coffee to relieve his disgust.

"The coffee on this floor sucks. Since most of the patients are in a coma or in isolation, I guess the doctors figure they don't need a pick me up."

The voice belonged to the boy seated across from him. All green eyes and freckle dashed cheeks, the boy sat cross-legged in his chair, cupping the toes of his dirty Chuck Taylors. The navy-blue blazer of his school uniform was open, revealing a sweater vest and the starched collar of a white shirt.

He offered Senior a puckish, but disarming grin. "The best coffee's on the fifth floor, near the doctor's lounge. A couple months ago the neurosurgeons complained about their coffee and it worked."

"I'll keep that it mind," Senior closed the paper and placed it on his lap. "You know, maybe they ought to try an intravenous drip of coffee. Nothing else seems to be working. "

"Wouldn't work," the boy shook his head. "See, caffeine belongs to the xanthine chemical group. Adenosine is a xanthine that's already in the brain. It's used as a neurotransmitter. They're really similar so caffeine looks a lot like adenosine to nerve cells so it sticks to adenosine receptors in the basal forebrain. The cells can't sense adenosine because caffeine is taking up the receptors. Instead of slowing down, the nerve cells speed up and stop the patient from getting tired. So because of the blocked adenosine, the neuron firing picks up and that makes the pituitary gland think there's an emergency. That's très dangereux for coma patients 'cause it can make for some nasty seizures."

Senior blinked.

The boy laughed. "My Dad's a neurology resident."

"Ah," Senior nodded. "He must be very proud."

The boy just shrugged, his eyes dimming. Suddenly, as if he flicked a switch, they brightened again. "Who ya visiting?"

"My son."

"The NCIS agent, right? He's the only male on this floor," the boy smiled at Senior's questioning look. "NCIS agents are really cool for the most part. You should be proud of him."

"He was a good man."

"Was?" the boy frowned. He rubbed his hand over his head, smoothing the curls ripening in the center of it. "My dad was in a coma once, when he was a kid. For six months, the doctors said he'd never wake up. It wasn't easy, but he recovered and went to med school and the rest is history. People gave up on him, but my grandpa stepped up for my dad in a big way. Maybe you should do the same thing."

Standing up, Senior folded the paper and tucked it under his arm. He walked toward the door, but stopped short of opening it. "Thank you."

The boy grinned and flashed him a thumbs up.

* * *

"Jethro?"

Gibbs peeled his forehead away from the glass and found him under the benevolent gaze of Ducky.

"It's bad, Duck."

"Oh I wouldn't rule Anthony out just yet," Ducky approached the glass and lightly pressed his hand against it. "He's beaten numerous odds before and he'll beat them again. Tony lives his life with a pertinacious resistance to setbacks. He could come back from this."

Gibbs didn't look at him. "Is that your professional opinion, doctor, or is that the relentless optimism of a friend in the face of what's clearly a disaster?"

"There are documented cases of spontaneous awakening, even in patients with low Glasgow scores. Though rare, medical miracles are possible. A lack of hope only serves as an impediment."

"So all I have to do is believe?" Gibbs scoffed. "Gelfand thinks he won't wake up. Without those damn machines, he'll die. I know Tony and I know he wouldn't want _that_," he waved a bitter hand at the glass-encased room. "To be the rest of his life."

"Agent Gibbs," Senior strolled into the room, his eyes slit with determination. "I'd like to have a word with you about Junior's care."

No one had noticed Gelfand and Gillian slice through the dense silence until Gelfand cleared his throat. "I'm glad you're both here," he nodded politely at Gibbs and Senior. "We need to discuss a further course of action."

Gillian gestured to the row of plastic chairs. "Perhaps you'd like to have a seat."

"No…just come right out with it…"

Gillian looked at Senior and nodded. He exchanged looks with Gelfand before he spoke. "Agent DiNozzo appears to be in a permanent coma. There's no indication that he's ever going to recover, and there's every indication that he won't. In the absence of a living will, it falls to you, Agent Gibbs, to decide whether or not to keep him on life-support."

* * *

The young man eased his ear away from the door, smiling.

He strolled down the corridor in search of his son, his white coat trailing behind him.


	8. Schisms and Sons, Brothers and Burdens

**Yet another epic length author's note: **My bad about the gap in updates. Writer's block people. So, I'm officially a college graduate and I'm off on a celebratory vacation. Why should you care? My updates may be farther apart than normal. Hey, a girl's gotta take a break. ;)

To the lovely** Diana Teo **(and anyone else who may be concerned): I, Flash McGowen, promise not to write Tony into the pearly gates. Tony will indeed dodge the coffin, but his road to recovery will be neither smooth nor hasty. When I began this story I had to promise my aspiring neurologist friend that I would stay in touch with medical reality, but **this is not a death fic in any way, shape or form**. So, please stick with me! Tony will live to well...DiNozzo up another day. :)

Oh! I was wondering if anybody would be so kind as to beta this sucker. After re-reading some of my chapters, I ran across quite a few (embarrassing) mistakes. It's rather ironic. I'm the one my friends call on to edit their papers, but I can't police my own chapters? Argh! So, if somebody would be kind enough to help me avoid various mistakes in the future, that would be très awesome.

Also, there was a misconception about my misspelling of "lightning" in the title. I've included an explanation in a revised version of the first chapter's author's note. If that's been bugging you as well, flip back a few chapters and check it out.

Thank you for all the comments and subscriptions. I appreciate every ounce of support you all have been giving this story. I'm really enjoying writing this and it makes it that much more delightful to know so many people are enjoying reading it!

So, I'm off to pack.

-Flash M.

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Eight: Schisms and Sons, Brothers and Burdens

* * *

I shake through the wreckage for signs of life.  
Scrolling through the paragraphs.  
Clicking through the photographs.

I wish I could make sense of what we do...  
Who are you? What are you living for?  
Tooth for tooth, maybe we'll go one more.

This life is lived in perfect symmetry.  
What I do, that will be done to me...

Read page after page of analysis.  
Looking for the final score.  
We're no closer than we were before.

Who are you? What are you fighting for?  
Holy truth? Brother I choose this mortal life...

-Perfect Symmetry, Keane, Perfect Symmetry

* * *

Gillian looked at Senior and nodded. He exchanged looks with Gelfand before he spoke. "Agent DiNozzo appears to be in a permanent coma. There's no indication that he's ever going to recover, and there's every indication that he won't. In the absence of a living will, it falls to you, Agent Gibbs, to decide whether or not to keep him on life-support."

"So that's it?" Senior folded his arms and narrowed his eyes at the doctors. "We just pull the plug and be done with it?"

Gelfand kept his eyes on Tony's chart as he spoke. "We ran several tests before he was placed in isolation—CT, neurological scans, we even reevaluated his Glasgow scores: as you know the seizure induced swelling and the subsequent craniectomy have put Tony at risk for brain abscess. Now, he's slowly managing to surpass that hurdle, but unfortunately…"

"...we were unable to detect a significant amount of brain activity," Gillian swept Gibbs and Senior with a sympathetic gaze. "I'm sorry."

Gibbs, for his part, tried not to succumb to the feeling of the linoleum sliding beneath his feet. The physical sensation, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, the sense of instability, the feeling of being entirely at the mercy of forces beyond his control—the familiarity of it all sickened him. He'd been there before: the day he and Franks toured NIS' evidence yard, the day he confronted the hunk of metal, caked with blood, that used to be his wife's car.

He cleared his throat and blinked away the memories. "He's brain dead?"

"We don't…" Gillian stammered as he caught Gibbs' hard look. "That's not what we call it anymore."

"Tony's most recent PET scan found residual cognitive function," Gelfand picked up for his colleague. "The good news is he does respond to noxious somatosensory stimuli, or severe pain so there continues to be some brain activity…"

"Are you saying he's never going to wake up?" Senior wanted the doctors to argue, to offer even the mildest form of reassurance, but neither doctor said a word.

"What do we do now?" Gibbs asked stoically.

Gelfand had the decency to look Gibbs square in the eye. "I want to say we should wait, that there's the possibility of change, but I won't lie to you. I won't rule out a recovery, but I'm sorry, the chances are slim to none."

"He's never going to wake up," Senior repeated. He looked through the clear glass of his son's isolation room. It was as if he were suspended under the blue glow of the ultraviolet lights, surrounded by the troop of machines guiding his every function.

This time Gillian flat out shook his head. "I'm sorry. The combination of the original trauma and the ensuing seizure engendered injuries…there was just too much damage."

Senior coughed and fidgeted, swallowing before he faced the surgeons. "There has to be something else you can do for him…"

"Is he in any pain?"

Gelfand didn't seem surprised by Gibbs' question. "No. As I said, he does respond to outside inflicted noxious somatosensory stimuli, but without the pain being administered by an outside source…" he shook his head and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "In layman's terms, he can't feel anything."

Gibbs shook his head.

Not feeling anything...

"Now a decision doesn't have to be made this instant. Agent DiNozzo will remain in isolation until his risk for brain abscess completely subsides. We'll keep him on a mannitol IV to drag the access fluid out of his neurons and he'll also remain on a course of intravenous antiepileptics. You're well within your rights to get a second opinion just as you're within your rights to have Agent DiNozzo remain on life support. Whatever you decide Dr. Gillian and I are here for you every step of the way."

"I know you and I don't see eye to eye as far as Junior's concerned," Senior began once the doctors excused themselves. "However, at the end of the day, that's my son lying in that bed and I have the right to a say in what happens next."

Gibbs said nothing as he tried to ride out the possessive streak running through him. Tony wasn't his son. He had always been aware of that, but the love Gibbs felt for him wasn't bijou and tidy, it didn't take into account the semantics of their relationship. There was nothing as simple as surrogate father or adopted son in that love, nothing so manageable that he could effortlessly stow it away whenever Tony's biological father decided to step into the picture.

"For some unfathomable reason, Junior thought the world of you and in that lapse of judgment he declared you his next of kin. I know you care for him and I understand that it looks like he's millions of miles away, but I think recovery is a possibility."

"You heard the doctors. I have to decide whether to keep him hooked up or pull the plug. He needs a machine to breathe. He can't speak. No one can get through to him. What kind of life is that? What kind of person would I be if twiddled my thumbs and allowed him to live it?"

"This isn't easy for me either. The plethora of machines and gadgets, that tube shoved down this throat, down his nose—I don't like it any more than you do, but give Junior a chance. He can beat this."

"And what if he doesn't?" Gibbs leveled Senior with a stern gaze. "How long are we supposed to wait? How long is he supposed to linger in this half-life before his body finally decides to give out?"

Senior ran his hands through his hair and gave a deep, humorless chuckle. "You're about as pessimistic and cynical as a Bob Dylan album. Okay, fine, I concede, I probably haven't been the greatest father. Ward Cleaver? Mike Brady? Forget about it. I've never deluded myself into thinking I was an all star in the parenting department, but I love my son enough to pretend I am. What kind of father would I be if I allowed you to give up on him without considering all the possibilities? I know you've had it rough. Guess what? You aren't the only one, but you found a way to move on. Give my son that same chance."

"I'm not giving up on him! Look at him! _Really _look at him lying there, and tell me, where is the hope in that? Tony wouldn't want that to be the rest of his life and you know it. Is this a difficult decision? You're damn right it is, but I'm not going to sucker myself into acting against Tony's best wishes."

"Okay. Fine, if that were you lying in that bed, maybe you wouldn't want to live, but Junior's got his whole life ahead of him. He's never been the type to shrug his shoulders and pack it in. He would never choose death and I'll be damned if I'll let you choose it for him."

* * *

Several years ago, when he was twenty-two, the young man visited New York City with a group of Ensigns from his graduating class. According to his birth records his biological father, a man he never knew, owned a company headquartered in Manhattan. He wondered if the man had ever bothered to look for him, if his father thought of him at all. The young man didn't even have a home address for the relative stranger, and his home phone number was unlisted. That didn't stop the young man from looking for him everywhere he went: Times Square, Cleopatra's Needle, Gramercy Tavern and even in the graffiti littered windows of the subway trains zooming through Grand Central Station.

Twice, from a distance, he believed he saw his father but when he got close enough, it turned out to be someone else. In that moment, he began to wonder if he would even recognize his father or vice versa. What if his father had gained weight, or dyed his hair, developed a fondness for plebeian fashion? Was he fooling himself by believing his father would know him by his face alone, the green of his eyes or the light brown tint in his hair, or even a common gesture? Was he looking for his father, or for the man in the picture he'd found amongst his late mother's belongings? During his trip, he began to wonder whether he'd already seen the man, whether he'd been near him and completely unaware of it, whether he'd sat next to him at a restaurant or brushed arms with him on the subway.

The young man's hatred, now, was everywhere. Every time he rounded a corner, every time he stepped into the hospital, every time he looked at his son. He haunted Bethesda's corridors and waiting areas, watching.

Everyday, when he looked into his father's face and didn't see even the puniest glimmer of recognition, what little remorse and regret he had left seeped from his conscience and clumped at his feet.

"You summoned."

The young man brushed the remnants of his dinner from the corners of his mouth with his napkin and offered Dr. Gillian a smile. "You're late. I hope you don't mind, I ordered without you."

Gillian rolled his eyes as he eased into the chair. "Cut the crap."

"Testy, testy," a ghost of a smile danced on the young man's lips as his eyes darkened. He lifted his glass of water in mock salute. "I'd watch that tone if I were you. Unless you want the relevant authorities to know about you helping Hailey raid the supply closets to fund her precious progeny's pricy private school, that is."

The muscles in Gillian's jaw tightened. "Hailey's been cleared. It's only a matter of time before they start knocking down my door—and yours."

"Not gonna happen," the young man shoveled a piece of rib eye in his mouth and shrugged. Swallowing, he took a sip of water and shook his head. "Will you relax? You're as nervous as a sword swallower with the hiccups. Damn boy, lighten up, will ya?"

"Lighten…lighten up? Are you—are you serious?" Gillian sputtered. "A man's in a coma, knocking on death's door and we helped put him there and you want me to take a breather?"

"Look, they've got about as much a chance as a one legged man in ass-kickin' contest when it comes to figurin' this whole thing out. However, if you keep walkin' around sputterin' like a damn Pinto, you're asking for trouble. Now, the way I figure it, this whole thing'll end up colder than a cast-iron commode on the north end of an iceberg in no time. All we have to do is act normal."

Gillian bowed his head and shook it. Combing his hands through his hair, he sat his elbows on the table and his cheeks in his palms. He sat that way for some time, he and the young both enveloped in a strenuous silence.

When he finally brought his head up, his forehead was bestrewn with his hair and his eyes were the picture of ambivalence. "I can't...I can't do this anymore. When we became doctors we took an oath. I know you want revenge and it some way, you deserve it, but this mess? This mess isn't the way to go about it."

"It's a little late to ride off on your moralistic high horse, don't ya think? Think about it, everybody involved in this took an oath and each of them went back on it. They failed me and they failed you. I didn't get justice the first time around, but I'll be cold and dead before I see anymore of those sons of bitches walk off scot-free—and that includes you."

Gillian swallowed. "We were brothers once."

"I know. That's why you're still alive."

Gillian swallowed, his voice seeping out in a tiny whisper. "I can't help but think some of this is my fault."

The young man nodded without looking at him. There were a lot of things Gillian could've done differently, no doubt about that. Regret was contagious. Fatal and contagious. It jumped from one person to the next, spreading a pandemic of guilt and pain. Looking at Gillian with his head in his hands and his shoulders bent, the young man knew Gillian suffered far worse than he ever had.

And that was saying a lot.

"Cheer up," the young man reached across the table and clasped Gillian's shoulder. "Everything's gonna be just fine."

* * *

Abby glowered at the name flashing across the bullpen's plasma. "Evil, thy name is James Wilson Dunne."

"I still can't believe the New York's ACS lost his file and what's left of it's sealed and encrypted," slumping in his chair, McGee laid his head on his desk and sighed heavily. "Four hours down the drain."

"Don't be such a Pessimist Patty, McGee," Abby groaned, tugging his shoulders to pull the exhausted agent upright. "At least we have a name."

"Yeah? Well, that's all we have. Once he was legally adopted by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia, New York transferred their portion of his file into the custody of the Page County division of Virginia's Child Protective services and we both know they didn't start entering their case files into an e-database until the 2000s..."

"...well after Dunne would've aged out in 1996, I know," it was Abby's turn to sigh. Tugging at her pigtails, she flopped into Tony's empty chair. Ignoring the harrowing sting in her chest, she focused on the flashing name and Dunne's virtually empty case file. "What kind of social service agency seals and encrypts a case file and then leaves behind the basics? It's like 'yeah, he was here only...not really.' Not only that, I still don't understand what all of this has to do with Tony. Gah, it reminds me of Aristotle..."

McGee quirked up a brow. "Aristotle?"

"Yeah," she shot up and began pacing between the desks. Her brow furrowed, she tugged at her bottom lip as she marched back and forth. "See, Aristotle wrote an essay "On Memory and Reminiscence" and in it he writes something along the lines of 'it often happens that, though a person cannot recollect at the moment, yet by seeking he can do, and discover what he seeks.' "

He scrubbed his face with his hands. "I assume there's a point..."

She smacked the back of his head. "You know better," smirking at his whimper of pain, she trudged forward. "See, when searching for someone or something, Aristotle suggests going with a sequential strategy. 'One must get a hold of a starting point' and then a person 'discovers what he seeks' by trying to remember an incident from the beginning to the end and then by setting up many separate pieces of the puzzle, we can find a unique aspect 'which will have for its unique sequel the fact that [we] wish to recollect.' "

"Wow you've been spending way too much time with Ducky. Besides, we don't have even the slightest of 'starting points' when it comes to tying Dunne to Tony. See, that method assumes we have some clue of what we're looking for. The only things we know for certain," he ticked the reasons off on his fingers. "Tony's strapped to a bed, trapped in a coma he may never be able to come out of. Dunne's our only connection between two of the dead social workers and we've barely got anything on him. The only thing acceptable is finding the person responsible for Tony's shooting and giving him some alone time with Gibbs."

"And Ziva," Abby nodded at the freshly opened elevator.

"What about Ziva?" she sauntered further into the bullpen and raked her eyes over the screen. "Who is the kid?"

"Ziva, meet James Wilson Dunne," McGee shrugged his shoulders toward the plasma. "Our mystery man and the only link between the two dead social workers whose shootings match Tony's. After a citizen of Virginia adopted him, New York ACS transferred his case file over to the local branch of CPS and..."

"So what does all that mean?"

"I was getting to that. We don't know," McGee sighed. "Between various state agencies losing pieces of his file, the heavily encrypted and the limited information in it to begin with..."

"How is he connected to Tony?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"Maybe we are going about this all wrong. We have been focusing solely on when and how Tony was shot. Maybe it all began far before, maybe there is something we are missing because we are confined in a such a limited cluster of time. It is possible that the clue lies somewhere in the days or weeks, maybe even months or years before Tony's shooting."

"Abby, boy am I glad to see you."

Nobody had noticed the sound of the elevator or Senior's sudden appearance in the bullpen. Though the smell of Clive Christian No 1 should've tipped them off.

Abby's hands immediately flew to her mouth. "Did something happen? How's Tony? Where's Gibbs?"

"It's not good. Gibbs wants to unplug my son and I need you to talk him out of it."


	9. Veritatem Fratribus Testari

**I'm back like four flats on a Cadillac. Or is it a Cadillac with four flats? **Basically, I'm back with a _super_ long update. Yay? Yay! Consider it a thank you for all the subscribing and favoriting you guys did while I was away. I developed writer's block, but the plot bunny's back to bouncing. I'll endeavor to update while the ideas are still flowing.

Hope you guys enjoy!

I've also cleaned up the previous chapters. If you notice any further mistakes, feel free to point them out.

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Nine: Veritatem Fratribus Testari

* * *

We're hanging in the shadow of your family tree, your haunted heart and me.  
Brought down by an old idea whose time has come and in the shadow of the gallows of your family tree.  
There's a hundred hearts or three pumping blood to the roots of evil to keep them young.

-Family Tree, TV on the Radio, Dear Science

* * *

Sipping coffee under the dimmed lights of Abby's lab, still half annoyed with himself for allowing the voluble forensic scientist to cajole him into her lair, Senior listened absently as the Gothic Giblet sang her master's praises. He had to admit, there was calming presence about her. His initial anger had begun to ebb under her benevolent, yet uncompromisingly forthright explanations as to why he should trust Gibbs' judgment. Her loyalty to Gibbs unwavering, she managed not to make Senior wrong about his unwillingness to remove Junior from those blasted machines—and he appreciated her for it.

"So you agree with me, then?" he looked at her almost pleadingly, visually begging her to be on his side. "Junior's got some fight left in him."

He watched her look out the window. The rain had picked up again, a mass of swollen droplets fleeing down the glass. When she turned around a sympathetic smile barely turned up her full lips. He would've resented her had he been stupid enough to believe her affinity to be exclusive. In the short time he'd spent with her he knew she felt an instinctual empathy for every Tom, Dick, and Senior her bright eyes settled on. Yet, he was also smart enough not to misconstrue her aberrance for ignorance. Abby was the type to subtlety hand people just enough to hang themselves, knowing the smart ones wouldn't. Her own little version of natural selection, he thought as he watched her over his cup's plastic lid, Charles Darwin would be proud.

"It's not about Gibbs giving up on him," she didn't telegraph her diplomacy. He was just good at reading the fine print, something that served him well in his line of work. "I think...I think he believes Tony's trying to leave and the machines are keeping her against his will."

"Do you believe that?"

"No," she answered honestly. "I don't, but it isn't up to me. Tony left it up to Gibbs. I know this hard for you. It's hard for all of us, including Gibbs, but Tony trusts him. If we all want to hold onto our sanity I think we should too..."

Senior interrupted indignantly. "How can you ask me to stand around twiddling my thumbs because Junior signed his life away to gain brownie points from his boss?"

"Do you really think Tony's life is that trivial?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be here."

"Touché."

"Abby, listen—"

"Have you ever read Johnny Got His Gun?"

He frowned, hitching up a bemused brow. "No. I did, however, see the movie when it came out in '71."

She shook her head. "Figures."

"What does that have to do with—"

"Okay," she seemed to perk up a bit. She began to pace the room, digging through her knowledge cache with each step. "It's like Joe...limbless, blind, can't speak...trapped in his bed with only his thoughts to keep him company. He lies there thinking, 'Inside me I'm screaming, nobody pays any attention. If I had arms, I could kill myself. If I had legs, I could run away. If I had a voice, I could talk and be some kind of company for myself. I could yell for help, but nobody would help me.' No matter how hard he pleads, nobody will let him go. I think it terrifies Gibbs to think that Tony could be experiencing even an iota of that kind of pain. That's what motivating Gibbs. You think this isn't tearing him up inside? Trust me, it's _killing _him, but he would rather die than keep Tony alive as a shrine to his memory."

Senior's eyes flashed. "That's a man in that bed, not a monument," he paused, bringing his hands up to his face. He did his best to massage away the rage and resentment. He decided to try a different tactic. "You need to talk to him, Abby. You can get through that cynical black vacuole he calls a heart and convince him to keep my son alive."

"You want me to manipulate..."

He released a slow, bitter string of laughter, bowed his head and leaned against one of lab's cabinets. "Wow, you people—whew, you people will never cease to amaze me. You all claim to love my son. You promenade around here like one big happy family. Well, if you could remove your proud patriarch from his pedestal for even a millisecond, you would see a deeply flawed man fixed in a maze of grief and never ending loss. He's not thinking straight. Abby, if you care about Junior, if you love Gibbs, understand that if you let him do this to Junior and himself: he'll have yet another loss and even more regret to add to the mound he's already humping around. Do you really want that on your conscience? Do you really want that on his?"

Her mouth fell open and he realized how low he'd sunk. Behind the outrage in her eyes, he could see her wheels turning. She'd retreated to the comfort of her beautiful mind, pleading with it to make sense of the mess, searching for the perfect equation or literary quote to make Gibbs Tony's knight in shinning principles. He felt guilty when she looked at him with disgust.

She hated him for exploiting her weakness.

She hated him because it worked.

"You and I both know Junior wouldn't want Gibbs to give up on him, Abby."

"Why do you call him that?" she asked so suddenly she startled him.

He looked puzzled. "What?"

" 'Junior'," she looked him in the eye. "Why?"

He chuckled. "I think it's rather obvious..."

"No," she tucked her jovial nature aside and drew her words from anger he didn't know she was capable of. "It isn't."

"What are you..."

"Well, I guess it is obvious if you think about it," she barreled ahead. "It's not easily perceived or understandable, overcompensation usually isn't to the untrained eye. It is, however, predictable and lacking in subtlety. I think you're holding Tony hostage in this little boy image. He has to be a child in order for you to feel like a man. This suave, powerful jetsetter in a car down payment worth of suit is just an image. You need to constantly be on display, upstaging everyone else..."

"My manhood isn't defined by my relationship with my son," he interrupted icily.

She was the least bit intimidated. "And his life isn't governed by your definition of living. How can you make an adult decision about his life if you don't even see him as an equal? How can you respect his wishes when you don't even respect him? I know you love Tony. You wouldn't be here if you didn't, but I can't help but think part of your devotion is another way to trump Gibbs because you think his bond with Tony overshadows yours."

Senior adjusted his sport coat gruffly. "Luckily it's not up to you."

"No, it's up to Gibbs," she said evenly. "That's why you're here trying to railroad me into doing your dirty work."

"I'm not the bad guy here, Abby."

"Neither is Gibbs."

"This getting is nowhere."

"And fast," she reached out and grabbed his hand. "I'm not trying to hurt you."

"I know," he smiled at the olive branch. "You know, I remember something out of the book you mentioned."

"Really?"

"I like you Abby. You talk in circles, but you appreciate the semantics off your words. The issue here is that Gibbs and I can't seem to agree on the definition of one pesky unit of language. I remember when Joe's thinking about the liberty. He thinks it's just a word, like house or a table or something like that. Somebody can prove there's a house by pointing to it, he said. Yet, when someone says liberty he can't point to it to prove it exists so how can he fight for it? I can point to my son and see those lines on those monitors. I can listen to those ventilators breathe for him and know that they're giving him life. That's worth fighting for."

"The same goes for the word life. Conceptual language is a hell of a persuasive tool. The farther we get from the things we're actually trying to define, the easier it is to twist the words to make them mean what we want."

"So life is abstract?"

"It's open to interpretation. That's the problem. You and Gibbs, and by extension Tony have very different opinions about what constitutes life. Sadly, Tony isn't here to make his own choices. Gibbs has to make a decision. It's what Tony asked of him."

"You love technology, Abby. How can you turn your nose up at it now that it's the only thing keeping Junior alive?"

"Because I love enough Tony enough to respect his dignity and let him go, even if it means losing the closest thing I've ever had to a big brother."

He surprised them both when he reached out and thumbed her tears away. In that moment, he understood why Gibbs loved her. Why Tony loved her. Her looked into her face. Her expression, like a child at the edge of a cliff, fingers clinging to the crumbling dirt, begging to pulled back to safety—her family was falling apart. Why couldn't she see that all he wanted to do was restore it?

"I know Gibbs loves my son. That isn't the issue. Gibbs can't see past his principles, his precious rules and neat definitions. I shouldn't have put you in the middle. I need someone in my corner and I'm sorry it isn't you. Somewhere there's a lawyer who's more receptive. Thank you for your time, Abby."

* * *

Upstairs, McGee was catching a break.

"You have no idea how much you've done. Thanks man, I owe you one," he hung up the phone and immediately began typing like a lunatic. "McGee for the win!"

"Your hunting expedition was helpful, yes?"

"Fishing, Ziva—and yeah, beyond helpful. A buddy of mine is an IT consultant for the Queen's branch of ACS and he managed to find us a lead on Dunne. When he was nine he was sent to an agency sponsored reform camp for foster kids with behavioral problems. She was able to pull the files of the boys he bunked with and one of them is a Marine stationed in Afghanistan. Lance Corporal Eugene Bailey, he's unavailable, but his superiors promised to put us in touch with him as soon as possible."

Without a word, Senior strutted past them on his way toward the elevator.

"What do think Abby said to him?" McGee asked, watching Tony's father with slit eyes as the older man pressed the down button the elevator.

"We shouldn't have left her alone with him."

"She can take care of herself, McGee."

"I know, but if he's using her..."

"...it means things are much worse than we thought."

He paused, taking in her words, weighing them until the force of their meaning seemed to encumber his body. Hunching over his desk, he placed his elbows on its cool top and rested his cheeks in his palms. Ziva maintained the iron silence, watching as he lowered his eyes down to his keyboard. When he finally looked up at her, there was defeat in his eyes.

He cleared his throat. "Do you think...do you think Gibbs'll really pull the plug?"

He looked so innocent, so boyishly vulnerable. His emotions were laid out before her like an unabridged testament to his humanity—and she hated him for it.

McGee was the only one of them who'd had a childhood as normal as humanly possible. He was a grown man before he learned to be emotionally distant and deceptive, and even still there were fragments of his heart still on his sleeves. With a glimmer of distain in her eye, Ziva imagined him surrounded in love, being raised by encouraging, warm-hearted parents. She saw hugs and kisses, family dinners and heart-to-hearts in front of the fireplace. She saw father-son games of catch in the front yard, she saw a blue-eyed man in the audience as a young Timmy McGee won yet another metal in the Math Olympics. She saw a man she never met embrace his son and tell him he was proud of him.

She wanted to strangle him.

Suddenly, she was a child again, standing under the warm lights during her dance recital, her watery brown eyes focused on the empty next to her mother, where her father promised to be.

"At least Tony's father is fighting for him."

The raw bitterness in her voice sent a chill through McGee. "Yeah, but do you think he's fighting on the right side? Do you think Tony want to spend the rest of his life hooked up to a machine?"

"He's here, that counts for something."

"Not if he's keeping Tony against his will."

"What is his will McGee?" she asked, almost tauntingly. "He didn't even bother to leave one."

"I...he left Gibbs—"

"What if it were you, McGee? What would you want your father to be?"

"You mean to do?"

"I said what I meant," she pushed. "Would you want him to be your hero and fight for you? Or would you want him to be a spectator in the crowd as he watched another man execute you?"

He swallowed. "I don't know what my father would do."

"He would be there," she said it as if it were a given.

It was his turn to be angry. "You don't know the first thing about my father."

"I know he would be there..."

"No," he said coldly. "You don't."

They held each other's gaze until McGee couldn't take it anymore.

"My childhood wasn't a utopia, Ziva," he said finally. "He wasn't always a guarantee."

"Maybe not, but he would never leave you to die."

With that, she backed away from an open mouthed McGee, grabbed her coat, and headed off in the direction of the hospital.

* * *

Once, when she was nine years old, Ziva's father promised to buy her a miniature seahorse if she finished the end of her fourth grade year at the top of her class. Eager to impress her father and overshadow her annoyingly overachieving brother, Ziva surpassed Eli David's expectations and managed to secure a spot in a summer program for intellectually gifted children.

After much anticipation, her sea horse arrived—delivered unceremoniously by a parcel service and not her father—a slightly thwarted Ziva tore open the brown box with reckless abandon. Unfortunately her excitement was short lived when she realized the box's florescent pink lettering screamed sea_ monkey _instead of sea _horse_, and even worse: the blasted _monkey _didn't even have the good manners to be alive.

Hoping for a miracle,Ziva dropped the inert lump into the included flimsy aquarium and waited. A few days later, the wad began to twitch. Hurt and disappointed, though she gave no inclination of either, she stoically watched as the sea monkey listlessly swam about the aquarium. A week later, when it died, Ziva dumped the aquarium and all its contents into the toilet.

When she was finished she looked up and found her brother Ari leaned against the bathroom's doorframe, watching her with a smirk of amused sympathy. "As is the way you should handle all of our father's promises."

Now, standing outside of Tony's room in the isolation ward, her face pressed against the frigid glass, Ziva remembered a conversation with Ducky about the hippocampus. It got its name from the early anatomists who believed its curvy shape closely resembled a seahorse. Although its function is a mystery, neuroscientists have since learned that it assisted the brain in learning new information, remembering recent events and forming long-term memories.

According to Ducky, if Tony's hippocampus was indeed damaged, his long term memories would remain in tact, but newly created ones...

She wondered if there would be a line draw in his mind: before and after he was shot. In one portion of his brain would there be a lifetime of emotional and intellectual information, mini-movies of both important and mundane events? She knew Gibbs would be there. Abby was impossible to forget. He'd probably remember a few Mc "insert witty noun or adjective here" jokes. Maybe even his mother and father, snippets of his childhood...

Watching him, submerged in an artificial life, she wondered what he would remember about her. Would she be as significant to him as she was to her? When he finally opened his eyes and looked at her, what synaptic impulse would decide the parts of their life he would keep or throwaway?

* * *

The next morning, Team Gibbs gathered at Bethesda as Tony was released from the isolation ward. Ducky and Palmer also managed to make it, even after the latter's litany of directional errors.

Senior was nowhere to be found.

"You can sit with him as soon as the nurses get him settled," Gelfand said, gently closing the door to Tony's new room in the ICU.

"Is there any change?"

"I'm afraid not," the surgeon solemnly replied to Abby's question. "We're keeping him comfortable though. He isn't in any pain."

McGee swallowed, darting his eyes between the room's glass observation window and Gelfand. "You said something about removing a part of his skull and storing it in his abdomen. Now that he's out of isolation, do you plan on returning it now..."

Gelfand cleared his throat. "Another surgery would be..."

"Pointless?"

"I was going to say unwise, Agent David."

"So you're throwing in the rug?"

"Uh...Ziva it's..." Palmer gulped as she lanced him with a death glare. "...unimportant."

"So your medical opinion is to either allow him to remain on life support until a:" she continued. "The machines fail or he does, or b: we watch Gibbs take the easy way out and pull the plug..."

"Ziva..."

"No, Gibbs. We should be honest with ourselves, right Dr. Gelfand? That is not Tony in there, that is not a man. That is a shell, a shell that is occupying and wasting a bed. What's the point in lavishing our hopes on a lifeless article, right Gelfand?"

A collective burst of shock was felt when her tears came. She shook quickly, like a wounded animal that couldn't bring itself to die. The team and Gelfand seemed to sense the impending wave of grief for they respectfully cleared the area, leaving Gibbs and Ziva engulfed in the bright hallway lights.

Gibbs held her as she cried, absorbing her crackled sobs. The torrent of grief and anger came slowly, like drops of acid, thick and lethal.

Ziva finally pulled away, slightly embarrassed by and resentful of her emotions, she watched with folded arms as a nurse reconnected one of Tony's tubes, unwilling to look Gibbs in the eye. "Abby told me his father was thinking about taking this to court."

He merely glanced at her.

"How can you be so stolid about this? Can you not see that he is dying?"

He gave her a once over. "I'm standing here, aren't I?"

"That is the problem. Tony's dying and you are standing by and allowing him to do so. You are even offering to help him along. Days ago you were chastising me for giving up and now..." she paused, stopping to fan her hands in front of him. "This, this is not the Gibbs that I know. This is not the Gibbs Tony entrusted with his life."

He kept his eyes on the window, rigidly focusing on the nurse fluffing Tony's pillows and propping up his legs. He found himself resenting the humane gestures. He hated that Tony wasn't aware of them, that he wasn't aware of anything. Worst of all, he hated that there was nothing he could do about it.

Ziva stared at Gibbs' clenched fists and shook her head. "Can you really blame his father?" she continued. "The doctors and Tony have essentially given you the right to play God with his son's life. If the situation were reversed, would you not feel resentful?"

He turned on her. "So, you think this is some sort of morbid power trip on my end?"

"No. I think you are only human, subject to doubt and confusion and unchecked emotions. I also think his father happens to be a self righteous, egotistical son a bitch—a self-righteous egotistical son a bitch who happens to love his son in own sporadic and dysfunctional way. I think he does not want you to realize too late that there may have been a chance, that Tony may have actually recovered."

"Ziva, I'm not the one playing God. Those machines are. Now, you look long and hard at him and you tell me that's what he would consider living."

"I think he would want you to believe in him. Even he knows hope is not a sign of weakness."

"I believe Tony deserves the right to make his own choice, not the doctors and not those damn machines, and I'm gonna make sure he gets it when the time comes."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Gibbs remained silent, just opened the door and pulled a chair up to Tony's bed and simply held his hand.

* * *

Later that evening, the young man tried to keep Gillian from screwing up.

"Will you please stop crying? If you keep whinin' and walkin' around on eggshells, you'll call attention to yourself. If you make this risky for me, if things start to get heavy, I'm not afraid to tie up the loose ends—all of them."

The young man flipped his cell phone closed only to drop it when he saw his son standing in the doorway of his bedroom.

"What was that about?"

"Don't worry about it," he bent over and picked up his phone. Tucking it in his pocket, he ruffled his son's hair. "Where have you been?"

"Next door. Becca was helping me with my math homework."

"Becca," he shook his head and chuckled. "You like her a lot, don't you?"

The boy shrugged. "She's okay. Grandpa said she wears enough makeup to paint a battleship and enough powder to blow it up."

"Sounds like something he'd say," laughing, he reached out and turned his son around, gripping his shoulders as he led him into the living room. "How about we order in tonight?"

"Cool," he flopped onto the couch and turned on the television. They watched a few basketball highlights in silence before the boy worked up the courage to speak. "Hey Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"That shirt...it belonged to your real mom, huh? I talked to Grandpa about that night," he barreled ahead before his father could speak. "I wasn't trying to get you in trouble or anything...I just wanted to understand, I mean, you've never lost it like that before."

"I never will again. You know I'd never hurt you, right?"

He nodded. "I know. Grandpa...he told me...he told me how your real mom died. I'm really sorry, Dad."

"I am too, kid."

"She used the shirt to...she used it when she..."

The young man nodded wordlessly.

"Do you think about her? I mean, do you still have memories of her...even after everything that happened to you..."

"A few. She was beautiful. Dark hair, even darker eyes. You'd have her curls if you'd stop choppin' them off."

The boy rubbed a hand over his head, the soft prickle of the burgeoning coils tickled his palm. "Why'd she do it?"

"What?"

"Kill herself?"

The images came then.

Her body swinging like a metronome.

Her toes pointed perfectly.

Her brown eyes staring ahead, her lips curved in relief.

The ceiling fan squealing to be let free.

"Never asked."

Not that he had to.

The boy drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms loosely around them. He rested cheek on his kneecaps and turned to his father. "When it doesn't hurt so much, do you thinking we could go fishing, maybe even camping and talk about her?"

"Hey, come on now kid," he shook his head and groaned. He snatched his cigarettes off of the coffee table and with a quick flick of blood red Zippo, he lit a Marlboro Light. "Are we gonna spend the rest of the night talkin' shit and swallowin' spit or are gonna enjoy the game?"

The boy flinched. He stood up and stretched. "Call me when the food comes."

Groaning, the young man put out his cigarette and shuffled into his room. Retrieving the shirt from behind his dresser, he pressed to his nose and allowed the distinctive scent of Clive Christian No. 1 to coil inside his nostrils.

Anthony DiNozzo Sr. was finally going to pay for everything he'd done.

The young man knew his mother would've wanted it that way.

* * *

"Mind if I join you?"

Gibbs looked up, relieved to find Abby standing in the door away. He couldn't deal with another round of Senior and Ziva's well-intentioned lectures on the meaning of life. Ethics and propriety weren't going to open Tony's eyes. Listening to the hiss of the ventilator, Gibbs wasn't actually sure what was going to bring Tony around.

He frowned at the paper cup in her hand. "Hospital coffee?"

"Beggars can't be choosers," she held out the cup, but he fended it off with a disgusted groan.

"I don't remember asking."

"I know you hate hospital coffee, but you need the caffeine. This hospital in particular has coffee that taste like feet. Not that I know what feet taste like. Podophilia just isn't my scene. Not that I'm judging or anything..."

"Abs, how many Caf-Pows have you had?"

"Seven," Abby sighed, solemnly regarding Tony as she pulled a second chair up to his bedside. She reached to stroke her friend's arm, but immediately decided against it. "I can't...looking at him makes it so real."

He stared at her a beat before returning his gaze back to Tony.

"I've got news," she watched him adjust Tony's blanket. "A friend of McGee's works as an IT consultant for the Queen branch of ACS in New York. He couldn't unseal James Wilson Dunne's electronic file, but he was able to track down what's left of his original one."

"And?"

"Wow you're unappreciative when you're in caffeine withdraw. _And_, while there wasn't much left he did find out about a state run juvenile camp he attended. From there McGee was able to track down his roommate and guess what? He's a Marine stationed in Afghanistan. McGee could have him on an MTAC feed tomorrow morning."

"That's great, Abs."

"Gibbs, you're going about this all wrong."

He wasn't surprised by her abruptness, he just wasn't in the mood. "Abby..."

"Look, I get it and I totally respect that ultimately this is your decision, a decision Tony trusted you to make on his behalf. I know you want what's best for him, but seriously Gibbs, you'd better think long and hard about this because whatever you decide'll be final for Tony, you and everybody else he loves."

"I'm aware of the consequences."

"I don't doubt your awareness."

"You doubt me."

"That's not..."

"You're entitled to an opinion, Abs."

"I know. I know and I'm not apologizing for having one, but you don't understand. I could never doubt you. I don't think I'm remotely capable of doubt as far as you're concerned, but Gibbs, lets face it, we both know he thinks the world of you. You're his hero, the Batman to his Robin, the Andy Taylor to his Barney Fife, Mario to his Luigi. He loves you and he'd walk through fire just to get an iota of praise from you..."

"So you want me to wake him with a kiss?"

"No, I want you to talk to him. Let him know that you expect him to come out of this. You're like a father to him. He trusts you more than anyone. Talk to him, Gibbs. Tell him that he's going to come around and that when he does, you'll be waiting for him."

"His father got to you, didn't he?"

"Of course he did. I'm not made of stone. He may not understand Tony, but his heart's in the right place."

"I just want to do right by him," Gibbs replied honestly. "I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but you all need to know that the option's on the table. When I signed those documents I promised I'd act in his best interest, even if doing so wasn't in mine."

"I wouldn't expect any less from you. It's just," she leaned over and laid her head on his shoulder. "I don't want him to die. I can't imagine my life without him in it."

"Me neither."

The sound of a clearing throat snatched their attention away from Tony and to the room's now open door.

"Agent Gibbs?"

He frowned at man who was swimming in his damp peacoat.

"Are you Agent Gibbs?"

"Who are you?"

Without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue stack of papers. Trusting them into Gibbs' hand, he offered only a curt "you've been served" before being on his way.

Abby wore her outrage on her face. "He actually went through with it."

Gibbs scanned the paper and calmly placed it in his lap. "He's suing me for medical guardianship."

* * *

Oh, by the way, as I'm sure you guys guessed, this chapter's title is in Latin. What does it mean? "To bear witness to the truth in brotherhood." Do the math. ;)


	10. Penumbra

**So, so sorry about the mix-up with this chapter. My chronic "messing simple 'ish up"-osis was flairing up. My bad!**

**Anyway, 'Ello: **So, I'm back—for real this time. And, I bring with me a chapter, a long chapter. Consider it an apology for promising you all an update and then leaving you hanging—again!

Also, a very big thank you to everyone who has supported this story in various capacities along the way. I cherish every reader, reviewer, follower, private message, and person who placed this story on their favorites list. Big, industrial sized ups to you all!

Lastly, please forgive any grammatical mistakes. I've tried to catch them all, but alas, I am a mere mortal with no beta.

-McFlash

* * *

The Lightening Strike

Chapter Ten: Penumbra

* * *

It's a cold I can't seem to find.

When it breaks, I hope we survive.

I feel one day I'll see it through.

When it breaks,

if it breaks,

it will be overdue.

Slow down,

hold on,

I'm waiting.

-Here We Divide, Dead Letter Circus, This is the Warning

* * *

Ducky knocked on the open door of Tony's hospital room to find Gibbs, glasses perched on his nose, perusing what the older man recognized as a legal document. Gibbs acknowledged the medical examiner's presence with a curt nod and returned to the piece of paper he was scowling at. Removing his scarf and gloves, Ducky gave one of Tony's blanketed legs a squeeze before turning his gaze on his riveted friend.

"I take it DiNozzo Senior elected to take his campaign to the legal theater," Ducky narrowed his eyes at the collection of blue legal documents haphazardly stacked on Tony's nightstand. "Abby mentioned he broached the idea of retaining counsel during his unsolicited visit to her lab. I must admit, I didn't expect him to move so quickly."

"He's trying to overturn the healthcare proxy. Pretrial discovery's in a few days."

"Hmm. Well, Anthony was of sound mind and body when he had those documents drafted. They were also witnessed by decorated federal agents and notarized. I dare say there's a rather strong possibility the case will be thrown out."

Gibbs gave a derisive snort. "I wouldn't count on it. He's already convinced himself that I somehow manipulated Tony into signing those papers. That and he's got connections out the ass. All he has to do is pander to the right judge and…" He paused and looked over at Tony, as if hoping to find the right words peppered like freckles on the young man's blank, inanimate face. "He can't win, Duck."

"Senior's political and unctuous cunning aside, Jethro, I have to ask: how much thought have you given to consequences of the course of action you wish to take? I, ahem," he cleared his throat at his friend's wintry scowl. "Well, the immediate sequel to pulling the proverbial plug is that young man's death –"

"Doesn't have to be."

Ducky's brows knitted in confusion. "Come again?"

"I don't know if Tony can function without those machines. I _do_ know he wouldn't want to be shut up in some convalescent home with tubes shoved down his throat for the rest of his so-called life. If he has any hope of functioning without life support, I wanna give him a chance to try."

Ducky regarded him with an anchored stare. "That's quite a gamble."

"It is."

They sat in silence for a time, Gibbs' eyes focused on the artificial rise and fall of Tony's chest, Ducky's musing wandering farther afield.

"Some years ago," Ducky finally began. "I read an article about a wild elephant who gave birth to a stillborn calf. A videographer filmed on in horror as the mother repeatedly kicked her child for hours on end. Subsequently, a wondrous phenomenon occurred: the calf stirred. That elephant had kicked her child back to life! Only instinct could've driven her to such drastic measures, drastic measures that worked."

When Gibbs remained enveloped in his brooding quietude, Ducky stood and retuned his scarf to his neck and his gloves to hands, bidding Tony goodbye with a grandfatherly pat on his cheek.

Ducky turned around just as he reached the threshold. "Get some rest, Jethro. I don't think Anthony would approve if you wound up in a bed beside him."

While morality was often fluid and open to conjecture, one thing Gibbs knew for sure: instinct was an internal process. He stood by his gut to the hilt. His principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad—he could begrudgingly admit—were, at times, unfortunately susceptible to outside influences, ideas, even verities. He was willing to believe his moral compass could be off center. But his gut, his adamant and unwavering visceral convictions, told him that Tony had a real shot. It went beyond probability and chance. His gut only spoke a language of absolutes:

Tony was fighting.

He just needed a push.

* * *

Unable to follow his very expensive lawyer's advice, Senior found himself at Bethesda just as visiting hours had ended. He managed to charm the young desk nurse, blandishing her with blarney only a DiNozzo could deliver. She gave him an hour, and though he smiled in appreciation, he could barely contain the bitterness and indignation of having to ask permission to visit his own son.

Junior was given one of the private suites at the end of the Intensive Care Unit's long hallway. The corridor alone had a bleak twinge to it. It was deserted, save for a member of maintenance staff mopping the bleached linoleum. He stopped at his son's door, almost afraid of what would greet him.

At least the kid's digs were ergonomically sound, Senior thought as he gingerly eased into the space's inviting light. The walls were painted a warm yellow, as if the genial color alone would induce a smooth recovery. The charming joviality of the room's homey decorations seemed to contradict the seriousness of the room's purpose. Senior wondered if had been designed that way.

The rest of the room was standard intensive care issue: the adjustable bed, the battalion of machines and tubes, the ever-beeping monitors. A door led to a small private bathroom. Senior couldn't help but wonder if Junior would ever be able to walk to it—if he would even remember what a bathroom was.

He moved further into the room and stood next to the bed. He looked at his son, the sportive scion he never really knew what to do with. A thick swaddle of white bandages blanketed his bald head, though a few stubborn prickles of brown hair sprouted erratically from beneath the gauze near his ears. He was paler than the paper thin sheets bunched below him, his muscle tone slowly receding along with the weight on his bones.

Senior reached posed Junior's hands neatly on the cool sheets, straightening his blankets. It was only the third time he'd tucked his son in.

He shook his head, scattering away the ripening particles of guilt and held onto one of Junior's limp hands as he reached into his pocket and fished out his wallet. He delicately removed the creased photograph, tenderly fingering the worn image.

He could smell the salty water, feel the waves gently rocking the boat. Senior proudly hoisted up the fish, a triumphant smile turns up his face. Junior stood at his side, an arm curved and his fists on his hips—so happy to be there.

Senior had read that some traumatic brain injury patients often remembered their childhood in remarkable detail, but were incapable of recalling events from their adult lives. They could blather on and on about schoolyard companions, talk about little league championships as if they'd been won minutes ago. They could remember their first day of school, but were unable to recall their wedding. They'd reminisce about old fishing trips, only to be unable to define the word boat.

Senior wondered if Junior would have any left memories to sift through. What recollections would be enshrouded by the damage, what memories would aid him in describing of his childhood?

The old man sat, scrutinizing his own mental mementos. It was then that he realized there weren't many to grasp onto, that the moment he was in, with his son's cold hand in his own and the madrigal of the machines inundating the room, was a defining moment in their relationship.

"Well boy," he sighed, tugging at the wrinkle-less sheets. "What do you think of the accommodations? Yeah, it's no Four Seasons, but it beats the Isolation Ward, don't cha think?"

He listened as the ventilator inhaled for his son, clung to the steady sound of the heart monitor testifying to the life left in Junior's broken body.

"From isolation to the ICU, that's a real kick upstairs kid. You're doing something right," he paused, carefully searching for the right words. "I gotta tell you, Junior, those _people_, those people you consider your family: they all think they know you, but they don't. They're either afraid of a life that isn't defined by their sublime principles or Gibbs' lofty tenets. They're so busy placating him instead of fighting for you..."

The thin strikes of colored bars on the brain monitor continued their languid dance.

"I know…I know he's been somewhat of a surrogate _father_," he spat out the word, only to wince as if the syllables were barbed and jagged. "You've grown a lot as his knee, I'll give him that. I suppose I…well, I respect your loyalty to and reverence for him. I know earning his approval is a driving force in your life. I also know you'd die for him. So, in a way, I'm hoping you'll live for him too."

He sucked in a breath and shut his eyes, softly shaking his head. When he opened them, he stared at his son with eyes that held decades worth of pain and regret. A lone tear trickled down his cheek as his eyes grasped onto the black sky outside the room's window. He sat quietly, weeding through the shame, deciding which words to throw away and which to keep.

"That man loves you like a son. I'm sure he's never told you. He's the 'actions speak louder than words' type. Every time he looks at you, languishing in this bed, something inside of him shatters. I can see it.

"He's doing his best to fight for what he thinks are your wishes, but I can see what it's doing to him. I know you don't want him to live with such a deep regret, tormented by the what ifs: 'What if he had given you the chance to breathe, just one more day to see if you'd open your eyes?' Don't do this to him, Junior. Don't be the next ghost to haunt—"

"—we need to talk."

Senior looked up to find Gibbs leaning against the doorjamb, holding is ever-present coffee cup in one hand and a stack of legal papers in the other. He didn't look as incensed as Senior had expected, but the old man was acquainted enough with Gibbs' antics to know he wouldn't show the enemy his hand.

Gibbs kept his face impassive, his eyes inscrutable. When he spoke his tone was soberly stern. "In the hallway."

"I take it you were served?"

Gibbs simply tilted his head and waited.

"I did what I had to for my son."

He took a silent sip of coffee and blinked.

"How much of what I…of _that_ did you hear?"

Gibbs continued to stare in lieu of an answer. Taking another swig of his coffee, he finally unzipped his equanimity and revealed a raw vulnerability Senior didn't think he was capable of.

"You need to understand that this isn't personal, Gibbs. I'm doing what's best for my son. The doctors say he's not in any pain. I don't see the harm in waiting."

"Waiting isn't the issue," Gibbs kept his tone benign, but firm. "You're acting like Tony's asleep and if we yell loud enough, if we shake him hard enough, he'll get the message and wake up."

"It's not impossible."

"I wish the doctors shared your optimism."

"Why are you rolling over and accepting this? Isn't it one of your precious rules—number three, isn't it?—'don't believe what you're told.' "

Gibbs forced out an exasperated sigh. "I've held his hand. I've begged. I've read the books. I've done the research," he ticked them off on his fingers. "Nothing changes. He's not going to have a real chance until those machines are unhooked and he's able to decide for himself."

" 'Decide!' Decide for himself?" flummoxed, Senior's face twisted in incredulous outrage. "In case you missed the memo, Junior isn't exactly on speaking terms."

"You know as well as I do the longer he's hooked up to those machines, he moves further and further away from being able to function without them. You're so damn busy analyzing my moral code that you can't see that your son's dying. Tony deserves to stay or go on his own terms. I want to give him the chance to choose whether he lives or dies."

"So that's what this is about? Your omniscient gut's telling you that Junior can function without life support and you're just running with it? Is this what he trusted you to do, gamble his life away? You know, it's not my kid that's lost: it's _you_! Instead of fighting—"

"I am fighting! I'm fighting for _him_ to make the choice. Not the doctors, the machines, or even _you..."_

_"_Tony's not the one in pain, Gibbs, you are. Your answer is to pull the plug because you can't deal with the unpredictability of the situation. You can't handle the affliction of another loss you couldn't do anything about, so you're trying to control the situation. Why can't you just wait for him? He just might surprise you!"

"And how long should we wait, Dr. DiNozzo?"

"We can take it day-by-day, week-to-week, year-by-year if it comes—"

"Years? Years of him being on those damn machines, worrying if the machines will disintegrate or he will? Terrified of a power outage or computer glitch? How is that fair to him? How is watching him die little by little what's best for him?"

"As long as _my son_'s breathing, even if the ventilator's the reason, he's still alive and there's a chance of recovery. See you in court."

* * *

"I don't see how I can be of much help to ya, ma'am," Lance Corporal Eugene Bailey shifted in chair as he stared out at Ziva from MTAC's colossal sized screen. "I haven't thought of, much less heard from Jimmy Dunne since I was a shorty."

"James Wilson Dunne is a suspect in the attempted murder of one of our agents as well as several social workers here in Washington and in New York. We would be grateful of any information you can give."

"A murderer?" his broad shoulders slumped. "Guess foster kids really can go either way, huh?"

Bailey sighed and leaned back in seat, removing his beige cap. His solemn brown eyes looked out over his wide, straight nose as he rubbed a hand over his baldhead. He brought his eyes upward, seeming to dig through his memories for something, anything that could help.

"Uh, lets see, Jimmy Dunne. He and I were the youngest in our barrack, but he'd been in the system longer than me. He had a chip on his shoulder or whatever, but I don't remember him being anymore violent than the rest of us. That's why were we at Camp Unity, because we all had 'issues'. He was actually pretty mild when you compare him to some of the other hard cases the state dumped there. The only thing I remember that could really make him lose his sh—err, _stuff, _was talking about his mama."

"His biological mother?"

Bailey nodded. "Dude loved his moms like crazy. He freaked out on a kid from our barrack for callin' her a ho once. Broke dude's jaw in three places. The counselors put him in the box for a couple of days. It was crazy."

"Did he confide in you about his mother or any other family member, maybe mention any names?"

"No, ma'am. No names. Nobody was big on getting personal. That type of stuff was ammunition for the wolves in there. He did mention he'd been bounced around to a couple homes, though. Oh—yeah!—the Dunnes were the second family to adopt him before they got sick of him like the first one and gave him back to the state. He was pretty pissed about that. He bitched about it in group therapy a couple times."

"With your permission, we ran your social services case file against the caseloads of the dead social workers and we determined the two of you did not have any caseworkers in common. Do you remember who his caseworker was?"

"Sorry, ma'am, I don't, but…" his eyes brightened as the memory registered. "…but I remember him going off on her when she arranged for him to be shipped off to some farming family in Virginia."

Ziva perked up. "Do you know what city?"

"Not off the top of my head, but—but!— I know I wrote to him a couple of times after he left camp!" he was visibly excited, his large hands flapping like flags in the wind. "He only wrote me back once to tell me not to contact him anymore. Ya know, now that I think about it, the whole thing was pretty crazy."

"How so?"

"It wasn't him. I could tell. It was his handwriting and all that, but it wasn't him. The whole letter was on some 'ol cultish and generally screwed up type crap about how he'd found a new family and didn't want to talk to nobody from his old life and all that. I, uh, still have the letter for ya want it. I don't know why I even bothered to hold on to some of my stuff from back in the day. It's stashed somewhere in my storage unit back home. My wife lives in family housing aboard Lejeune. I could have her find it and ship it, if ya want."

"NCIS can handle the logistics, but we'll need you to sign a release."

"Consider it done, ma'am."

"Thank you for your help, Lance Corporal Bailey."

"It was no trouble, ma'am. I'm sorry about your agent and those social workers. I'm…uh… sorry Dunne turned out this way. Ya know, some of those homes," He paused, a haunted look tinting his chiseled features. His voice was course with deep, primeval emotion as he navigated his baritone voice around his words. "Those homes, if ya can call them that, where they stashed us "troubled ones", I gotta tell ya…I'm not excusing Dunne or anything…but ya gotta understand, ma'am, some of those places were some serious hell holes, straight up. I guess I'm saying I get why he turned out the way he did."

"You turned out all right."

Then he snapped his spine straight, and his gaze turned sober. "I owe my life to the Corps, ma'am. Who knows where I'd be, _who_ I'd be without the Marines. I'm sorry to cut this short, ma'am, but our convoy is Oscar Mike in a few. If there's anything else I can do for your investigation, let me know."

"Will do. Take care of yourself, Bailey."

"You too, ma'am. Bailey out."

Twenty-four hours after disconnecting the feed, the team had yet another name— James Wilson Murphy—a name with a sordid history all its own.


End file.
